The Trust
by ISA-Sniper
Summary: There exists a faction in the United States government that few know of. They have committed the most heinous acts in history. They have done things most people will never know about. They are...the Trust. Rating may change. AU.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

_**"Cliffhanger"  
Day 2 - 07:35:56  
Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson  
Task Force 141  
Tian Shan Range, Kazakhstan**_

The wind that blew through the Tian Shan mountains was cold: I could feel as harsh gusts of wind smacked against me in sporadic bursts with the times in between being filled with gentler and longer periods of cool breezes blowing across my face and chest. Of course, I wasn't cold. Military equipment, a winter coat, a thermal jacket, and a layer of hot sweat generated by half an hour of straight mountain climbing were keeping me perfectly warm as I enjoyed the brief respite given to Captain John MacTavish and myself after we had been spending a majority of this day climbing, hiking, and climbing some more to get to where we were now.

I stole a brief glance upward as we waited there: it wasn't that much higher until we would be at the top of the cliff. From there MacTavish had told me that our orders were to infiltrate the base, meet up with a CIA spook who had some sort of secret reasons for following us in on the mission, we would get the ACS module, and then we would make our way to the designated primary extraction zone at the best possible speed that we could possibly manage. If it wasn't for the fact that we had to work with a spook from the Central Intelligence Agency, a man by the name of 1st Lieutenant Richard Brook, then I would have felt just fine about this mission but as a member of the 1-4-1, I had to be willing to deal with variables like that. Besides, he was on our side, and a third gun just might prove useful...even if he was a pencil-pusher who had barely ever been in the field.

The end of our break was suddenly announced with a MiG roaring away from overhead.

"Alright Roach, breaks over: let's go." Captain MacTavish ordered.

I watched him throw his cigar over the edge of the cliff, I stole a glance down at it, and watched as an almost unnoticeable black shape bounced down the icy face of the cliff to the foggy depths far below. Then we rose seemingly as one body in to a standing position before we started moving. We went relatively slowly, having to keep our balance as we did so. Soon we reached an area that Soap found suitable in terms of how flat it was, ordered me to spot him, and then we both started up. As I climbed up the cliff, performing an action that was felt like it was becoming instinctual to me, my mind was slightly elsewhere. As we climbed, forcing ourselves up, I kept wondering how a pencil pusher from the CIA made it through this. Had he gotten in by some other way and if so, how? Everywhere else around the base was massive mountains and one heavily guarded road between all those mountains. Besides that, there was no way that he had gotten in from something like a parachute or a helicopter. The guy must have been pretty fit for a desk worker-turned-field agent. It didn't matter though, because even if he had simply had to cut a hole through the fence and walk through, we still had to meet up with him as part of our orders directly from General Shepard himself.

As we climbed another MiG took off, shaking large pieces of ice loose from the face of the cliff. I watched as MacTavish lost his grip on one of his climbing axes and swung to the right, both as a result of the MiG passing so close, and also probably to avoid the falling ice. I myself shifted to the right and watched as the larger pieces of ice went tumbling past me, breaking up in to smaller pieces as they fell down the cliff, and the smaller pieces simply bounced off me. I didn't wait long for the ice to fall and resumed climbing as soon as I could, MacTavish doing the same. I watched the Captain disappear over the edge as he pulled himself up above me and I kept climbing until I had caught up, digging my axes in to the surface of the small plateau on which we had found ourselves, and pulled myself up. A thin and wispy fog surrounded the area immediately around us and I watched as MacTavish steeled his nerves for the next jump. I had, of course, seen the satellite photography and did the same.

"Good luck mate, see you on the other side." MacTavish said.

I gave him a nod and watched as he turned to the ledge. He ran and leaped from the edge, straight in to the fog. Once he did so I waited for a moment and watched it clear enough for me to see him waving me to follow him over. I took off running and jumped from the edge, my axes raising above my head in midair, and one of my feet extended ahead of me. My foot caught the ice first and they were followed immediately by my axes digging in to the ice...but that didn't last. I had kicked in to a bad piece of ice and it gave out almost instantly under the strain of my weight: leaving me sliding down the cliff with only my axes to save my life. I began panicking as I slid, then the matter was made worse by the right axe busting free, and I was suddenly left hanging by one hand. I was really panicking now, looking down to see the foggy and seemingly bottomless mist from which I had just come: I had always had a fear of dying alone. I thought this was it, that Captain MacTavish would have to abandon me and move on, but then I heard a sound like my own axes slicing through the ice.

Captain MacTavish burst from the fog in a flurry of ice particles as he kicked his feet in to the cliff face, stopping his own fall. MacTavish clasped a hand around my wrist in that same moment and I suddenly felt relief starting to come over me. He motioned with his head and I gave him a nod. I swung my body as best I could, timing it with his own through, and increasing the overall momentum as Captain MacTavish threw me farther up the cliff. I dug in with my axes and resumed climbing to the top. I felt the adrenaline from my near-death experience beginning to fade away as the adrenaline of being in the middle of an extremely dangerous mission began to take over. I kept climbing until I reached the top of a second plataue with Captain MacTavish right behind me. When I crested the top I stuck my climbing axes back on to my vest and took my primary weapon, a silenced ACR with a heartbeat sensor and a red-dot sight attached, from my side, and MacTavish drew his rifle as well. We pulled ourselves up several small rises in the cliff-face until we both arrived at our destination: after all that trouble we had managed to get inside the base's perimeter.

"Roach: check your heartbeat sensor." Captain MacTavish ordered.

I flipped it away from the gun, the sensor suddenly activating at the motion. It showed me it's scope, a small line going out to detect the heartbeat of anything bigger than a small piece of fauna. I knew exactly how it worked, that this one was in fine working condition, the color coding that was programmed in to it, and it's obvious practical applications in combat. However, being the newest guy to the team, I guessed that one of the things I would receive besides crap from my fellow Task Force members was the concern (sometimes unnecessary) of my superior officer.

"You should be able to see me on the scope." MacTavish said "The blue dot is me, any unrecognized contacts will show up as white dots."

I nodded and we both started moving at a low crouch near the runway, right as a MiG came in for a landing.

"Roach, these muppets have no idea we're here: let's try and keep it that way." Captain MacTavish said.

I did nothing in response as we rounded a turn in the trail and began cresting a small rise...but then we were both put on alert by something we saw. The human eye naturally picks out any shapes that don't seem natural to the surrounding environment. That's why straight lines, faces, and the silhouettes of people can all seem to stick out more in an environment than things like trees, animals, and other parts of nature which was why they had developed things like camouflage uniforms and colored face-paint. I was no college-qualified naturalist, but I had never known about black boots magically growing out of the snow of the Tian Shan Range. MacTavish and I both approached slowly, our guns raised, and we scanned our surroundings at all times. The tall ridge to out right, the runway, and the large rock to the left of the bodies we had just found. It was almost definitely our contact, Lieutenant Brook, but we didn't want to take any chances. To be safe, MacTavish issued the challenge we had been briefed on.

"Shakespeare." Captain MacTavish called.

We both watched as a crouching figure suddenly stepped out from behind the rock. His face was unidentifiable, masked by a winter mask to keep his nose and mouth warm while, a white beanie on the top of his head, and a pair of goggles across his face the revealed the only recognizable trait which was his blue eyes. He was in combat and climbing gear like our own, he had things like a few grenades and ammo pouches on his chest gear, and he was holding a SCAR-H with a silencer and thermal scope attached to it. It was obvious with the way that he had casually revealed himself, with his weapon down, and without so much as a singly order barked at us that he was the Lieutenant Brook who we had been ordered to meet. He moved towards us and stopped a few feet away.

"Hello Captain MacTavish." Lieutenant Brook said in a light but somehow unfriendly voice as he then looked to me "Sergeant Sanderson." He said, giving me a nod.

"Good evening Lieutenant Brook." MacTavish said "Mind telling the Sergeant here why you're tagging along?" MacTavish sounded annoyed "Your friends said I wasn't allowed."

"I'm simply here to retrieve some files we believe might be on the base: you two don't need to worry, I won't interfere with your mission." Lieutenant Brook seemed to be trying to tell MacTavish to shut up without actually saying it.

"Alright then, let's go." Captain MacTavish still sounded annoyed as he motioned with his head for me to follow him.

We kept moving down the trail as Lieutenant Brook took up a spot behind us. As we passed the rock behind which the spook had been hiding I was able to get a perfectly clear look at the bodies as I had passed them: with they way the blood from their head wounds had darkened and how snow had settled over them in a thin sheet, it was obvious that they had been laying in that position for some time now. We approached another turn in the trail, coming to a rise in the path, and as we did two white dots began showing up on my scope with a beeping sound emanating from my ear-bud as if to remind me. When we began to crest the rise I saw the masked heads of the two Russian soldiers as they both stood there talking to each other about...something. Neither of them noticed any of us.

"Alright Roach, let's take them out at the same time: on three." Captain MacTavish ordered "You take the one on the left."

I looked through my red-dot sight as MacTavish got in position, the dot partially blotting out the face of my target.

"1, 2...3." Captain MacTavish counted.

The count had been relatively quick considering the kind of precision that we were approaching the situation with but we both fired at the same time. The Russian to the right fell forward as the single round from Captain MacTavish's M21 smacked in to the top of his neck while my target fell like a bag of bricks: three rounds from my rifle buried straight in to his face. We moved on wordlessly past the two bodies, going further in to the hostile base with every step.

"Storm's brewin' up." Captain MacTavish suddenly commented.

"I noticed it too, we can use it to our advantage." Lieutenant Brook spoke from behind us.

It was at the moment that Captain MacTavish said it that I too noticed it. The snow had been falling at a light but constant rate since we had inserted and according to the weather reports it was to be that way for the next four or five hours. Apparently since we had inserted that weather forecast had changed because now the snowfall was becoming heavier, closing the distance of my sight closer than before. We kept moving towards a line of marker flags that were placed so patrols would be able to tell where a steep fall was during a storm.

"I'll provide overwatch with the thermal scope from this ridge, you two go further in to the base." Captain MacTavish ordered.

I watched as Captain MacTavish jumped up to the ridge that had been to our right this entire time, pulled himself up, and disappeared from all forms of detection save for my rifle's heartbeat sensor. I looked to Lieutenant Brook and he made a motion for me to lead the way. I nodded and began moving towards the marker flags, gently hopping down from the edge, and landing in a pile of snow below. I heard almost nothing save for snow crunching as Lieutenant Brook hopped down beside me and we slowly began moving across a snow-stained asphalt road. Ahead of us was an orange-painted snow tractor and a dark green jeep through the windows of which I could see a Russian sporting a large beard lighting up a cigarette. My heartbeat also picked up something just past the fence, two contacts. I noticed a small green building with an open door. Around that corner of the building I watched a man emerge from around one of the corners and make his way slowly through the storm towards the doorway. As soon as he was out of sight through the doorway I moved to take cover by the green jeep, opposite the side of the smoking Russian.

_"He's mine."_ I suddenly heard Captain MacTavish through my ear-piece.

A moment later I heard the sound of a round making contact with a human target and peeked under the jeep to see the now dead Russian, the cigarette still dangling from his lips. I rose back up in to a proper crouch and continued past the jeep and fence, moving past the open door of the nearby building, and towards the corner where the second Russian had come from. We found ourselves between the building and the perimeter fence. We moved slowly from that building, past another one, and towards a third green building with another door in which my sensor detected two contacts. I looked back to Lieutenant Brook and waved for him to follow me as I went around the right side of that building, crouching low to avoid a pair of windows through which one of the two contacts might have been looking. Then we were able to rise up in to crouches once again, moving to an open and empty cargo crate which both hid us from sight and gave us a break from the snow-fall. We kept moving though, and came to face a large slope with a bright orange perimeter fence on the crest. I eyeballed it, looked to the left which lead across a relatively flat path in to the base, and then I figured that Lieutenant and I could easily mount the slope without too much trouble or hassle.

I motioned Lieutenant Brook towards the slope and moved there myself. I kicked in with my climbing boots, leaned forward, and dug in with one hand to support myself as I climbed up through a gap in the marker fence at the top. Lieutenant Brook was right behind me, following in the same fashion as I had climbed it. I crouched at the top, waiting for him, and keeping a non-physical eye out with the heartbeat sensor attached to my rifle. I detected nothing out in the blinding snow as Lieutenant Brook finally topped the slope to come crouch beside me, just inside the marker fence. I looked to him as he tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention, then pointed off down the other side of the slope.

"I have to head that way for my part of the mission, I'll catch up with the two of you." Lieutenant Brook said.

I nodded my understanding and watched him with my heartbeat sensor, the blue dot getting further and further away until it was out of range of the scope. I then looked away and continued going across the slope, towards the fuel, and then I suddenly heard the familiar beeping of my heartbeat sensor in my ear-bud again. I saw the very edge of a white dot at the farthest range of the scope, directly ahead of me, and I went prone in to the snow. I looked down the sites of my ACR and tried to peer in to the snow-storm so I could see the person coming from ahead. I saw the vague black sillouhette of somebody appearing in the snow ahead of me, moving at a steady walk, and keeping their head down. I watched that person walk closer, and closer, and closer still without noticing me.

_"I got him."_ I heard MacTavish say through my ear-bud.

I watched a spout of pink mist as the head of the man in front of me kicked to the side, his knees buckled, and he dropped in to the snow like a rag doll. I rose up in to a crouch and moved on past the dead body, further yet to the fuel dump. I quickly reached the end of the hill on which I had been moving this whole time, crossed a thin road, and then I could tell before I even saw the planes that I was on the runway because spots of black stuck up through the snow, that and it was far too flat to be natural. When I did reach the planes I ducked under their wings but kept moving forward at the best possible speed I could manage without slipping on the powdery snow beneath my feet.

_"Hold up: I'm detecting twenty plus foot-mobiles headed for your position."_ MacTavish said.

A spike of adrenaline went through my heart and I kept moving towards the fuel station until I saw it seemingly manifest itself out of the snow directly ahead of me. I moved for one of the pump nozzles, removed a pack of C4 that I had been carrying with me for the mission, and I set up the remote detonator. Feeling satisfied with my work I turned back towards the way I had came, scanning the area for any hostiles who might have followed me.

_"No kills, no alerts: impressive, Roach."_ MacTavish complimented me before continuing, _"I just hacked their comms: it sounds like the module is in the far north hanger, race you there: Oscar-Mike, out."_ Then he ended communications.

I started heading for what my wrist-mounted GPS tracker identified as north, unable to find it myself in this storm. I moved as fast as I possibly could without sprinting once again, keeping an eye on my heartbeat sensor this time in case I ran across any portion of those twenty or more soldiers that MacTavish had spotted earlier. I didn't want to run in to a force that large on my own without even knowing where they were, so I kept scanning in a ninety-degree arch ahead of me until I saw the hanger that MacTavish had told me about. It was two hangers, actually, with a wide alley between them, and so I slipped in to that alley. As I approached the drop-off at the end of the first alley, which would place me in a back path behind the two hangars, I thought for sure that I had beaten MacTavish by a long shot as I jumped down and landed in a crouch.

"Took the scenic route, eh?" I suddenly heard him to my left.

I looked over to see him standing by the back door of one of the hangars with a Kalashnikov in hand. I held in a sigh of defeat in front of the Captain, instead simply moving closer as he motioned with his head for me to follow him. He pushed the door open and we both stepped in, some of the snow from our boots falling to the cement floor of the hangar. We started down the hallway towards a group of lockers when we saw a shadow come through a doorway ahead and to our right: a Russian guard who must have been on patrol in the hangar or getting something from one of the lockers. He didn't even notice us as he stepped through the doorway and turned to one of the lockers. MacTavish and I had both broken out in to a run at that point, straight for the unfortunate Russian guard. MacTavish ran full-bore in to him as I moved in to the doorway with my rifle raised. It only took me a second to give the area a quick sweep of the area so I glanced over my shoulder just as MacTavish drove his knife in to the man's throat.

He only twitched once as MacTavish stood up again, sheathing his knife. and walking towards the remains of the satellite as if nothing had just happened.

"Roach, go upstairs, and secure the ACS module." MacTavish ordered.

I nodded and quickly bound up a flight of metal stairs, keeping my eyes on the area above me, and making sure that no Russians came out of the only doorway above me. I reached the top of the stairs in moments and moved through the doorway with my rifle raised, keeping an eye on my heartbeat sensor as I scanned the room, and turning left to approach a desk on which sat both a computer and our primary object: the ACS module sitting next to the computer, waiting for me almost. I snatched it up from the desk and stuffed it inside my coat...just as I heard a sound which sent a chill down my spine: I heard the sound of the massive hangar door opening up which meant that...

_"Roach, I've been compromised."_ MacTavish said _"Hold your position keep your head down."_

I crouched down as I moved to the doorway from which I had entered, taking cover behind a small stack of crates and barrels. I was able to peer through a space between the crates and the barrel. At the doorway stood at least twelve or thirteen Russian soldiers who were all watching Captain MacTavish intently as he went to his knees with his hands above his head.

_"This is Major Petrov!"_ A voice on a loud-speaker boomed _"Come out with your hands up, you have five seconds to comply!"_

I was tense as I watched the scenario before me.

_"5...4..."_ Major Petrov started counting.

_"Roach: go to plan B."_ Captain MacTavish whispered.

I didn't hesitate in retrieving my detonator from my vest and smashing down on the trigger as hard as I possibly could. Time suddenly seemed to slow down as the ground shook beneath my feet, the Russians began to turn around, and a massive pillar of fire and smoke rose up in the sky from the direction of the fuel depot. I raised my ACR as I rose to a stand, MacTavish and I both opening fire on the soldiers. They were gunned down with almost no trouble for us as I moved down the stairs, Captain MacTavish taking cover near the main door. From there on everything became a blur of fear and excitement for me as MacTavish and I both moved from the hanger. We rushed for cover behind a cement barricade, opening fire on the Russians firing at us from the strip. MacTavish ordered me to take cover near a MiG but before I could clear out the Russians near it to do so, it burst in to a cloud of fire and shrapnel. The enemy soldiers near it were consumed in the hell-fire before I rose up and ran for the jet's remains. I began firing at the soldiers I could see while MacTavish headed for the jeeps ahead of me. As he began to give me covering fire I started moving again.

"Snowmobiles!" Captain MacTavish called out.

I was caught in the open as the two-man snowmobiles came bounding up from a nearby slope. I watched as the man on the back of one raised his rifle at me but I reacted first, sweeping both him and his driver of the vehicle with one long stream of fire. It flipped as it was suddenly thrown off balance and I was able to follow MacTavish as we both ran for a break in a nearby perimiter fence. We jumped over the edge and slid down a slope before rising to our feet once again. We looked behind us for our pursuers just as a small group of soldiers came to the edge of the slope. We opened fire and the few who we didn't kill began to retreat back from the slope.

"Lieutenant Brook, where are you!" I heard Captain MacTavish call, obviously in to his radio.

_"I've been compromised, you two will have to get there without me!"_ He replied.

My blood went cold as more snowmobiles came over the slope after us: Lieutenant Brook wasn't extracting, we were being forced to leave him behind. I didn't have time to feel much regret as MacTavish caught two of the men on a snowmobile with his axe, shooting the survivor with his pistol. He broke out running for the second one that stopped nearby as we shot it's occupants, ordering me to man the first one. I practically threw myself on to the seat of the snowmobile, slinging my ACR, and pulling my "survival gun" from my vest: a G18. I hit the gas and began moving as quickly as I could between the trees while Captain MacTavish radioed in for our extraction. I saw snowmobiles beginning to chase us and as one swept up in front of me I raised my Glock, opening fire, and watching as the driver was torn off from the stream of bullets that left the passenger to his painful fate of smacking straight in to a large tree at high speed. I turned with the cliff descent and I saw Captain MacTavish following me nearby as we began cutting through the trees, around a small patch, and then we hit the edge of an extremely short cliff. We both flew through a tree and came down amongst a large group of more soldiers running for snowmobiles to pursue us but we opened fire as we cut through them.

Then my heart practically froze as we began moving across a massive expanse of ice, most likely a lake in the summer, as I looked up. A helicopter came over us and turned to face us, trying to take us out with a flurry of rockets that exploded harmlessly on an island of snow a few yards to my right. MacTavish and I were going as fast as we could, occasionally opening fire on our Russian pursuers as we went in to a curve along what appeared to be a river...until we started going up-slope towards a gap in a line of trees. This geographical feature in itself didn't get any more adrenaline flowing through my veins, it was what happened when we crested the slope at well over eighty miles an hour, and came down on a nearly vertical slope. It was dotted with trees that Captain MacTavish and I both swerved to avoid to the best of our abilities while still maintaining high speeds. Captain MacTavish was talking with our helicopter pilot as we began to reach the end of the slope. I was sweating as I maxed out the throttle for the jump ahead. I hit a rise just before the gap and felt my stomach drop to my knees. Then I touched down on the other side with a massive thud that shook my whole body...and made my crotch particularly uncomfortable as I turned towards the landing helicopter.

_"They have the ACS module, let's get out of here!"_ One member of the security team said as we pulled up.

Captain MacTavish and I almost dived off of the snowmobiles before we ran between the members of the security team. They were back inside before we even had a chance to sit down, the helicopter began to take off, and the rump shut: blocking off the cold and snow of Kazakhstan's Tian Shan Range. The crew chief of the helicopter came back to us, looked at the two of us, and gave Captain MacTavish a look of understanding...he knew what had probably happened to Lieutenant Brook.


	2. Chapter 1: Field Exercise

**Chapter 1: Field Exercise**

_*A picture, black and white that's starting to stain with age, can be seen amongst various pieces of paper and a few other photographs. The picture is of a thin-faced man in a Soviet military officer's cap, a Soviet military Captain's rank markings visible on his hat. He is wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses that hide his eyes from few, resting on his thin looking nose, and taking up a majority of the man's small face*_

_That man is Captain Yasha Onisim: an accomplished air commander and the son-in-law of a Colonel back in Moscow. Normally we wouldn't care too much about a seemingly know-nothing Soviet officer who probably only reached where he is now because of his relative but we've recently received word that he is in a very dangerous location. All four of the Mil-24D Hind gunships under his command have been transferred to what appears to be a recently established facility to get supplies to rebels south of the border supplies without needing to use the Ho Chi Minh trail, or at least that's what we suspect, but our superiors also fear that they may be planning to use it to perform gunship runs on fire-bases near the Cambodian border. Whichever it is we've been tasked with the job of handling the situation._

_This mission should be a simple in-and-out job._

_The team will head down a river approximately one quarter mile to the east of the base from the border between Cambodia and South Vietnam, identify the perimeter, and attempt to gain access to the facility without raising the alarm. From there you boys have very simple orders: set explosives on munitions and fuel for those gunships, kill the Captain, and when you're done make sure that they can't resume operations. We have some Phantoms with five hundred pound dumb-bombs, cluster bombs, and napalm unless our little picnic doesn't go as we all hope it does._

_You're professionals though, I know you boys can do this._

_

* * *

_

_**"Field Exercise"**_

_**January 17th, 1968**_

_**Lance Corporal Stephen Kane**_

_**1st Army Reasearch Division (The Trust)**_

_**Somewhere in Cambodia**_

There were six of us in the helicopter, including myself, and we were all fully prepared for the operation ahead of us. We were all wearing olive drab uniforms, load-bearing vests, and our weapons were all loaded and expertly maintained. All of our faces were covered in green and black paint that would make the once distinctive shapes of our faces hard to recognize at a distance in the darkness of night and thick jungle canopy. I was the squad's assigned sharpshooter so I had been assigned an M14 with a Starlight scope attached and a high-powered day scope in my vest as a last resort in case something happened to scope currently attached. Our team's assigned heavy weapons specialist had a Stoner machine gun that he had been ordered to not fire it unless he absolutely had to: we didn't want our enemies getting all excited over the thought they might capture a bunch of Navy SEALs, just like the SEALs themselves did if they were out in the field of Stoners. Besides that we had three AK-47 assault rifles carried by our team leader, our radio man, and our team medic while the man assigned to carry most of the explosives was armed with an Ithaca 37 pump-action shotgun. We were all prepared to raise hell against that Soviet officer and the men who had been unfortunate enough to be placed under his command.

Our squad was a good one too.

Staff Sergeant Sean Berge was a forty one year old combat veteran who had enlisted with the Marine Corp in 1944 at the age of seventeen in hopes to get in a few good shots at the Japanese while the war was still going. He was a short man at only five feet and ten inches in height with extremely short-kept brown hair on top his head that contrasted sharply with his normally pale skin. He had dark green eyes that seemed to blend in with some of his facial paint as he went over his Kalashnikov one last time before we were going to be dropped off. When I had first met the man he had been friendly enough, something that I found out he did with all of the other members of the squad when he had first met them in order to get them accustomed to being in his squad. Eventually he had dropped that 'kind guardian' act for genuine friendliness for all of us now that we had trained together so much. He was also a man who could boast having gone through three wives and countless dates. He was the kind of squad leader that would happily forgive the smaller infractions if you were on his good side.

Sitting next to him across the chopper was Corporal Ray Sutton, the man assigned to carry a majority of our explosives for this operation. He was a tall and lanky man who was six feet and two inches in overall height with pale skin and dark red hair hidden under a camouflaged bush hat. He had ice blue eyes that always seemed to carry some sort of fire, the kind that it was hard to tell the meaning of, and it only ever showed up when we were out on an operation or even just talking about a mission that we had done or were about to do. He was a nice guy like Sergeant Berge but he was more of the silent type who didn't talk much until the whiskey started flowing...then he could say some really stupid things, once even getting himself slapped by just about every woman in a bar that he and I had visited while we were training back in the states. He was also one of top-ranked demolitions specialists in the entirety of the "1st Army Research Division", one of those people who you couldn't help but love to be working with on operations like this that needed plenty of explosives to be set.

On the opposite side of Ray from Sergeant Berge was our radio man, Corporal James Searcy. I don't want to seem racist but it seemed to me as if James was one of an extremely small group of black people who I had met in my time with the 1st ARD. He was a tall man just like ray at six feet flat with a shaved head and a clean-shaven face, not to say that he filled in the stereotype of the big tough black man if this were some poorly written piece of fiction. He wasn't as friendly as Ray or Sergeant Berge but he wasn't hostile to anybody else, just a sort of detached brother-in-arms to the rest of us who didn't like talking with us as much as he liked flirting with local women whenever we managed to take time for a break in between all the training that we had gone through during our relatively short time in-country. Overall though, despite his generally quiet attitude we were still told by some of the ladies in those bars that 'man with beautiful browns' was probably one of the nicest people that they had ever 'had' before...though that may have been to just get more money from us.

To my right sat Lance Corporal Steve 'Mom' Blythe, our team's assigned medic for this operation and my spotter unless I had to breach the perimeter with the rest of the team. He was only a half an inch shorter then I was at five feet and eleven and a half inches. He also had almost identical short-kept raven black hair like my own that was kept short all around like I kept my own. He also had the same easily tanned skin like mine, making him so much like me that our other friends often joked about how it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between us if it weren't for the minor height difference and the fact that he had green eyes while I had dark blue eyes. He was almost identical to Sergeant Berge in terms of personality though, the kind of man that could be one of the friendliest people you had ever met if you got on his good side. So basically he was a very fun guy to be around most of the time, though that didn't mean that he was relaxed about his job: he was always dedicated to performing at his top when out in the field and had taken his training so seriously that he graduated within the top five of his class out of his specialized training.

On the opposite side of me was Corporal Barney 'Mother' Rucker, the man lugging our Stoner. Barney had been a good friend of mine when we had served in the United States Army together as part of the same LRRP squad earlier in this very same war. He was a short man like Sergeant Berge at five feet and ten inches, just like the Staff Sergeant, but the muscles across his body made the stout but short man just the kind of guy to have with you if the bar broke out in a fight...and I had learned that from all the times when we had decided to tangle with some REMFs back in LRRP. He was a pale-skinned man of Irish heritage who burned just as easily as his first-generation parents did: the camouflage paint disguising his red nose and cheeks from view. He had a pair of emerald green eyes that could dazzle some of the local ladies if he wanted...the kind who didn't need money to give you a good night...or in Barney's case, force one upon you with copious amounts of alcohol and pigeon-English sweet talking that many of the women that we met in bars tried to woo him with whenever they found him.

"Are you ready Kane?" Barney asked me, placing a hand on my shoulder to get my attention over the noise of the helicopter.

I looked over at him with a small smile as I held my M14 a little closer: we could barely see each other in the darkness of the night but what little of my teeth and my eyes gave away my face at that close a distance for the two of us. I gave him a nod of my head before I looked past him to outside the Huey. If this had been a day-time insertion then I would have been able to see the massive expanses of jungle, broken only by the occasional clearings and winding, snake-like rivers that made up the beautiful countryside of what was sadly a very dangerous and war-tortured country and that of its neighboring countries. Sure, it wasn't the kind of place where I would want to build a summer home, but it was a beautiful place even with the deadly inhabitants such as bamboo vipers and other hostile wild-life...not to mention the hostile locals armed with Chicom rifles and grenades, just about dying for the chance to get a shot off at a "capitalist American pig" like myself and the others in my squad. Sometimes I would find myself lying in my bed late at night, wondering why in the hell I had enlisted in the Army to fight over here in the first place. Maybe it had been to feel more honorable in my dad's eyes by not being drafted or maybe it was just because I wanted something to do with my life.

Regardless, I was here now, and that was what mattered at the moment: not why.

I felt the Huey starting to descend and I could tell from the horizon, barely lit by the quarter full moon that the helicopter was starting in one the first of several planned fake insertions. It was something that had been employed by LRRP teams to throw off enemy observers. It would lower down in to potential landing zones, act like it was dropping off a team, and that way it would throw off local observers on where exactly the expected team had been dropped off. We were hoping that there weren't any observers like that, even so close to Cambodia, but our superiors weren't blind to the fact that their enemies used Cambodia as a common path for supplies and men to move around so they didn't want to take any chances. I felt the helicopter start to level out and come to a stop. We waited a while, rose up, and continued moving once again. It wasn't long before we dipped down, rose up, and dipped down a third time in another spot. Then we were finally coming in for the real landing and I felt as we lowered down once again. I could even hear the faint sounds of water being disturbed by the rotor wash as the helicopter came in to a hover right next to a river which ran through both Cambodia and South Vietnam.

I prepared to rise to my feet, faced my left, and watched as Barney hopped from the helicopter to the dark ground below. I followed out soon after him and I instantly dropped in to a crouch once my boots had hit the ground. From there I moved to several feet from Barney in the short grass of the clearing in which we had landed. I looked through my Starlight scope in hopes to catch the flash of any skin or other giveaway of the enemy. After a brief scan I felt Sergeant Berge's hand on my shoulder as he went around to each of us in order to make sure that we knew to get ready to move out. This was usually followed by hand signals, written orders, or the very rare spoken word to tell us how to form up. I felt pressure from Sergeant Berge's hand as he extended a piece of paper directly in front of my face with his other hand. I took it from him and squinted at it in the darkness of the night: it was a simple order that I was to take point. It made sense seeing as I was the one with the Starlight scope attached to my rifle. I tucked the paper away in to a pocket of my vest before slowly rising up in to a crouch.

I looked around to make sure that the rest of the squad was following me.

* * *

The entire way to the camp had been tense as we had moved through the darkness. Now I had stopped operating in my role as a point-man to nestle behind a fallen tree where I could look out on the low-lit airbase while James crouched beside me with a Starlight scope of his own to act as my spotter. From my current vantage point I had a clear shot at anybody near the gunships, I could see through the windows of a few huts, and I could see the night time guards through the scope of my Starlight scope:their faces and hands glowing a bright green color against the darkness of their surroundings as I looked around at all of them while occasionally glancing at the location in which my five other squad mates all crouched in waiting for Staff Sergeant Berge to give the order to start the operation. They would be communicating with me through a radio hand-piece in case a specific target needed fire should the mission's element of surprise suddenly be compromised. My contribution to the mission would be to simply provide sniper support and pray that nothing went wrong, or that if we had to call in the F-4s that at least the others would be clear of the base with James and myself. So far nothing had happened outside of watching the guards while James relayed info on the few people who were awake and out in the base at the moment to both me and the rest of the squad.

"Looks like it's all clear for you to move, nearest guard is twenty yards at your three o' clock." I heard James whisper.

I watched that guard as he looked about with what looked like a very bored expression through my scope. He obviously wasn't fully alert as he looked out in to the darkness, a hand moving up to cover a deep yawn while he waited for what I could only assume to be his relief for the rest of the night. I watched as the rest of the squad slowly moved past the man a good distance away, totally unseen as they all took cover on a raised hut near the edge of the camp. I watched as Sergeant Berge slowly rose up from a crouch in order to peer through the darkened window, scanning the interior since he knew that I wouldn't be able to see any of the detail in the room unless it was practically pressing against the window. He looked back at Ray with a nod before motioning with his head for the man to get up with him. They slowly moved around to the front of the shack and three of them disappeared until I watched Ray appear in the window again with his shotgun raised. He disappeared from view again and it wasn't long before I watched the group appear again, moving along the edge of the camp to another much more rectangular hut.

Once again I watched as Sergeant Berge looked through a window to the inside before giving Ray a simple hand-signal pointing under the hut. I watched Ray scan the area with his shotgun before crawling under the hut on his back and I could only assume that it was a barracks area for the crew and guards in order to weaken the response if the alarm was raised. After five minutes I watched Ray come crawling out, Sergeant Berge and Barney both assisted him by pulling him up by his vest once he was out. I watched as they scanned the lowly lite center areas of the base, keeping their eyes peeled as Ray reported any guards and their movements that proved vital to the team's security. I watched them advanced past another, much larger L-shaped shack in which they looked in to the interior. Sergeant Berge shook his head to the squad and advanced to a row of what looked to be four tanks containing fuel for the helicopters. They all disappeared between them and for the next eight minutes the group disappeared from my view entirely while they presumably planted explosives.

Soon they appeared once again and I watched as they gave the helicopters a wide berth, going out in to the forest surrounding the base once again before popping back in to head for another L-shaped building, much larger than any of the others there, and I could only assume it housed the ammunition for the gunships. I watched Sergeant Berge approach the doorway and slowly push it open with his gun raised as it was raised too high for him to peer in to the windows. As he and the rest of the team disappeared inside I began looking at the four watchtowers that rested at each corner of the base, going no higher than the trees would allow to avoid being seen by American spotter planes across the border...as if it had helped much. The guards inside didn't seem to be doing much as I scanned through them, going over information we had already known when we first arrived at the base: small spotlights on each one, two men per tower, and what looked to be RPD 7.62mm light machine guns. Nothing seemed off about the towers until I noticed one with a third inhabitant holding what looked to be a radio.

Before I could tell James about it, it was too late. I watched the man point in to the building that the rest of my team had disappeared in to and suddenly the spotlights on the towers flared to life. Their bright beams nearly blinded me at their sources as they all focused on the shed. I heard James speaking in quick, harsh whispers as he began informing the others that they had just been compromised. I started scanning the areas and listened as small horns started blaring...but then something happened as soldiers started piling out of one of the buildings that Sergeant Berge and the others had 'visited' but before the first few could get out of the front door my scope was suddenly filled with light, forcing me to pull away from my scope to watch the small tower of flame and debris rise up to the top of the tree-line. The men who had been standing in the doorway where thrown out through the air while others emerged from the fire before landing as unrecognizable husks. I found the third man from the tower who had apparently spotted the team and radioed it in...but I paused. I had been ordered not to fire unless I was told, so I didn't give away my position to the enemy.

"Ask Berge if I can fire." I ordered.

"Sarge, Steve wants permission to fire." James whispered in to the radio, pausing for the response "Okay Steve, here's the plan: try to take out the spotlights first, then move on to the ground troops, and while you're keeping them busy the Sarge and others are going to try and break away out the back, and then you cover them until they are safely away." I looked back to James as he spoke "Then we extract and meet up with them at the secondary extraction point across the border." James finished.

I nodded and resumed looking through my scope, selecting my first spotlight as the one containing the third man. I lined up my shot and fired one round, my M14 kicking in to my shoulder, and watching as the spotlight's lens shattered from the impact of the 7.62mm round from my rifle. I watched the three people in the tower stumble back in surprise...and one of them had a serious misstep as he fell head-first to the ground below. I shifted to the next tower, then the next, and finally the last one with well trained ease. In a matter of moments the base had lost it's spotlights and I could start choosing from among the men on the ground who were all aiming at the building. The first man I picked was part of a two-man machine gun team, crouching down with the light machine gun as he fired sporadic bursts in the general direction of the building: barely seeming to aim as he did so. I lined up my shot, fired once, and watched as his helmet was flung from his head while he fell to the side from the shot. The man carrying his ammo jumped back in shock and began scrambling for the machine gun until I fired again. His helmet had been properly strapped on and so it wasn't removed when I fired but I had probably put a large hole in it given the angle at which I had shot in to the back of his neck.

I moved on to one of the riflemen in a group of people gathering amongst the gunships and out in the open to fire at the building. However, I could now look and see as what looked to be Barney creeping out in to the trees behind the building, staying low. Following him were Steve and Sergeant Berge who both seemed to be carrying something...then I realized it was Sutton. Sutton was either dead or injured, that wood obviously wasn't built to withstand the impact of bullets. As they disappeared in to the tree line, thoughts of if Ray was alive or dead were pushed to the back of my mind as the other explosives began going off now. I lowered my rifle and looked to James, nodding towards the forest. Both of us began to slowly crawl across the forest, away from our position overlooking the base, listening as it began going up in to a tower of flames. After we were near the river once again James radioed in to have the Phantoms inspect the area while we kept going. Once that was done we crossed the river, trekked across the border to South Vietnam, and kept in communication with the rest of our squad until we reached the secondary extraction point.

It was done: we had, at least in part, proven the capabilities of the Trust.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Yeah, this is one of the flashbacks that are going to be included in the story. The whole point of these isn't to bring up some dramatic point that explains the political climate of the world in MW and MW2 but instead, it is meant to show you just what sort of dark things the Trust has done in it's past. Near the beginning none of these things seem sinister, just like normal covert operations, but by the end of the story if you are anything like a friend of mine who read some of the ideas you may end up hating the Trust. I'll say no more on that matter and will end these notes with a simple request that if you have read then please review as well.


	3. Chapter 2: Avalanche

**Chapter 2: Avalanche**

_[__1st Army Research Division satellite systems loading]_

_[Tracking, Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon]_

_[Status: Alive]_

_[Location: Tian Shan mountain range, Kazakhstan]_

_[Unit: 1__st__ Army Research Division, aka 'the Trust']_

_Well, it seems that we didn't win the war like everyone says._

_The Russian government has given in to the Ultranationalists, insurgent activity in the Middle East is at an all-time high, Zakhaev's death really only made him a martyr, and it seems that Russia is just looking for any excuse to get at the western nations. They got their chance not too long ago when a US satellite suffered from mechanical problems and crashed in to the Tian Shan mountains. We knew that they were trying to crack the ACS module aboard it so Task Force 141 was sent in with a CIA operative under the cover name of 1st Lieutenant Richard Brook. Their mission got compromised after they got the ACS module out, it ended with the facility's jet fuel storage being blown sky high, and somehow the CIA agent got himself captured by base security. The Central Intelligence Agency doesn't want to risk a team of their own so they think we're the only people who are available to do this right now, hell we're probably the only ones who are capable to them._

_So the mission is simple._

_The agent had been there to try and recover files pertaining to whatever it was that the Ultranationalists had been planning to do with the module so your mission is a simple two-part operation. Once you've breached the perimeter under the cover of a recent snow-storm you'll need to split up in to at least two teams. One team has to search for any data like what the 'Lieutenant' had been looking for while the second team has to recover the spook...but if he's still alive and you can't get him, then you'll have to kill him. Good luck guys, make us proud._

* * *

_**"Avalanche"  
Day 3 - 00:03:25  
Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon  
The Trust  
Tian Shan Range, Kazakhstan**_

The storm that had arrived at the base earlier was a pathetic excuse for a blizzard compared to the one that had arrived later, the night of Task Force 141's mission in the base. Of course it had reduced visibility to within at least a yard, but now it had gotten so bad that it was almost impossible to see more then a few feet when outside the minor cover provided by the buildings in the base. All the scheduled night flights had been canceled until visibility increased so the planes all sat where they had been left for the night as the snow whipped across the tarmac, covering the guiding lines painted on to it's surface. Meanwhile the night guards actually inside the perimeter of the facility all looked for excuses to head inside whenever they could, for as long as they could. To make things worse there was no moon out that night so even if it wasn't pitch black from combining that with the lac of light, it still would have been dark with or without the storm blotting out the sky from view. The guards on the outside of the perimeter were the really unfortunate ones because shifts had been extended due to the recent breach in security...and because they didn't want anybody trying to take their new prisoner until agents from the SVR had a chance to pump him for any information they possibly could.

One of those guards was obviously quite cold as he fumbled with his lighter to shield it's flame from the wind, wanting to light a cigarette in order to at least enjoy _something_ while he stood on guard duty. I would have felt bad for the man in this cold if it hadn't been for the fact that me and five other men had just climbed part of a nearby mountain, went skiing down the other side, buried our skiing gear, and had been out in this unforgiving cold for the last three hours, probably less than the guard, but he hadn't been required to do all the extreme physical workouts that we had gone through before getting here.

I adjusted my grip on the silenced M4 which I had inserted with while I debated on whether or not I should kill the guard. Earlier satellite observations had shown what appeared to be tire tracks from a truck that obviously was charged with dropping off and picking up the guards around the fence so if we killed him then we would either need to take the time to move him or just hope that we completed our mission before his body was discovered by the truck driver. I shifted my M4 to my side as I grabbed the ice picks I had been keeping with me ever since we had stashed the rest of our skiing gear further back.

I didn't want to risk missing a shot and hitting the fence, alerting the guard in the process.

I slowly moved in to position and readied my climbing pick as I watched the guard try and light his cigarette. He never heard me over the storm as I came running forward and he didn't see me, even as I came right beside him, and drove my pick in to his throat. The guard let out a yelp of surprise and one of his arms rose up to the axe as if in an attempt to remove it but it was too late: he was already near death by the time he hit the snow. I pulled the pick and retrieved a large handful of snow which I used to wipe off the blade before putting it away once more. Then I simply dragged his body as close to the perimeter fence as I could, hoping the snow would cover the sight of him from the trucks, at least until our operation would be complete. Once that was done I gave a hand-signal and watched the five thermal signatures of the rest of my squad as they moved to regroup with me. Once they had grouped up we continued with our infiltration as our team's heavy weapons specialist, Staff Sergeant Robert Gaston, dropped in to a crouch while cupping his hands in front of him.

Our team's sharpshooter and my assigned "battle buddy" Sergeant Alicia Barham headed over to him. She was lifted up on his hand as she scanned the area beyond the fence with her thermally equipped M21 sniper rifle before coming back down to signal that it was clear of hostiles. After that Robert retrieved a knife from his vest and cut a line down the green cloth which hung on the fence before our squad leader, 1st Lieutenant William Ibarra moved forward with a pair of cutters that he used to make a small hole in the fence that would be mostly hidden from view if somebody wasn't purposefully looking for it.

Once he had knocked the fence segment to the inside we all proceeded through to the inside of the base. From there we looked each other over as 1st Lieutenant Ibarra gave a series of hand signals ordering us to break up in to our "battle buddy" groups in order to search for the CIA agent, a man under the cover name of 1st Lieutenant Richard Brook. He had infiltrated the base with members of Task Force 141 in order to recover files pertaining to Russian plans for the captured American ACS module. Our mission was to find those very same files and to extract the agent, or if that wasn't possible to kill him if we believed there was no way to get him out alive.

Our pairing off was preplanned and simple: 1st Lieutenant Ibarra and Robert were the first pairing, then there was our technological expert Corporal Tyler Parkhill and our team's medic Lance Corporal Reese 'Doc' Middleton were the next pair, and then there was Alicia and myself as the third pair. We had planned out the assignment for each pair for this mission. 1st Lieutenant Ibarra and Robert would be operating as a security element by securing an escape route, planting C4 charges, and possibly even setting up claymores to be used in order to kill enemy forces or to simply disrupt their attempts to intercept the other two pairs on the way out if the alarm were to be raised.

Since Reese was the squad's medic, he and Tyler were assigned to attempt the recovery of the agent with Reese attending to any wounds or injuries he might have upon recovery. That left Alicia and myself to search likely areas of the facility in order to find any files or papers on what the Russian's had been planning to use the module for. As Alicia and I headed between two cargo containers for cover from the storm I couldn't decide if I should have felt privileged that the Central Intelligence Agency trusted us with this mission or offended that they didn't think it was worth risking a team of their own for the agent's recovery.

"The first building that the Lieutenant marked is just north of here." Alicia whispered through my head-piece.

I nodded in understanding before we both began moving out from our cover between the cargo containers. Our movement was quick and quiet as we kept eyes out on all the buildings where we could occasionally glimpse the thermal signatures of Russian soldiers through some of the windows. Meanwhile in the distance we could occasionally see one or two Russians moving along the more open areas fo the base in a vain attempt by base security to still run something that resembled at least in some way the security measures that should be taken after a raid like the on just performed that cost a large portion of jet fuel, several jets, two or three jeeps, and only God knew how many men and munitions that were all taken or expended in what turned in to a mostly useless effort to get something out of the raid besides a sense of frustration at their defeat and a man who probably wasn't telling them anything, When we finally arrived at one of the buildings that Lieutenant Ibarra had marked on a satellite map, we took time to take in a view of it from ground-level.

It was a two story building that wasn't very large; no more than four rooms on each floor, but it just struck me as an important building when I saw it. It was probably the home of one of the base's higher ranking officers and maybe his close aids. Alicia and I found ourselves facing the side that held the front door but we both slowly began sneaking around to the other side while trying to stay out of the light cast from a small portion of the windows on the building.

We didn't see any thermal signatures in the lit windows or the darkened ones but we didn't want to take any chances at being spotted by somebody. It took us almost no time at all to finish circling around to the other side of the building where we found the back door where only a single sentry stood on the steps of the door, obviously unable to see us through the thick snow fall of this night. Alicia and I both were laying prone in the snow as we tried to decide how to deal with the sentry without possibly alerting somebody on the other side of the back door.

_"This is team two."_ Tyler's voice came in through my head-piece _"We've found the Lieutenant, we're going to find a way to get to him, and head for the evac-site."_

_"Rodger that, what is your progress team three?"_ Lieutenant Ibarra asked us.

"We're at the first building, preparing to infiltrate now." I replied.

_"Rodger, keep us updated on your status." _Lieutenant Ibarra ordered.

"Yes, sir." I replied.

Alicia and I rose up to crouch in the snow as I grew a bead on the sentry by the back door. I aimed for the general area of his heart and just prayed I didn't punch straight through to the door on the other side, but there was no other way to really do it. I took aim and squeezed the trigger, able to watch with satisfaction as the man slumped to the porch in a heap, partially falling forward to the ground as he did so. Alicia and I wasted no time from there, moving forward as fast as we could to the door without tripping through the snow until we both arrived at the body, dragged him off the porch, and then prepared to try and get inside without alerting anybody who could be inside.

I carefully reached forward to the door handle, found it unlocked, and pushed it open to reveal a darkened kitchen with only a light on over the sink to illuminate the area. I removed my thermal goggles and made sure that the room was clear as Alicia came in behind me. The kitchen we entered was totally empty but judging by the look of the dirty dishes in the nearby sink, it probably hadn't been long since the house's occupants had eaten their dinner. In the kitchen there were two doorways, one partially opened to reveal a stair case up, and the other was shut tightly preventing a view beyond it.

I signaled Alicia to that door and she nodded her understanding as I headed for the second door. She would search the first floor for any files or information while I would search the second floor for anything similar: we wanted to get this done as fast as possible so we wouldn't keep anybody else waiting too long for us. As I slowly pulled the door open, keeping my rifle trained ahead for any threat on the other side, I could hear the door creaking almost imperceptibly as Alicia did the same. We moved through the doors as one and from there I couldn't even hear the faint sounds of her controlled foot steps as I tried to make as little noise as possible ascending the stairs which were thankfully covered in a thick red carpet down the center that helped muffle the aforementioned steps to the top where another partially opened door was. I could see light shining from the other side as the sound of a lighter drifted down to my ears, followed shortly by what sounded like glass clinking against something softly. As I approached this door I hesitantly reached out for the handle with a gloved hand, constantly looking through the space between the door and the frame as it grew ever larger.

The room looked as if it was a social room: too fancy for a living room, but open to too much through-traffic to really be a den. The walls were a dark red color with shelves that held various trophies, pieces of paper that I could only assume to be various degrees and rewards hung from the walls, and there were even a few animal heads. On the far side of the room there was a fire-place that was burning brightly, sillouhetting two large and comfortable looking dark brown leather chairs that were facing me at such an angle that I could see one was occupied. The man looked to be an older gentleman with a graying beard and a shaved head. He was in a pair of pajamas and slippers, probably in the process of his nightly routine before bed, and I could see that he was enjoying a thick-looking cigar while having just finished pouring himself a small glass of vodka on a waist-high table between the two chairs. If I had still been in the regular Army I might have taken time to think about this man's life. He probably had a home back in civilization with a wife and a few kids waiting for him to get back from this post, he might have had some friends back at a bar near where he lived that he liked socializing with, and he was probably a genuinely friendly man if I were to meet him under different circumstances.

That's how the old me would have thought.

The trained and experienced me saw him simply as a threat.

I didn't hesitate as I took aim and squeezed the trigger. The rounds shot throw the back of the chair just as the man had sat to take a drink, punching through in to him, and I could hear as well as see the impact of one of the rounds going straight through him in to the brick-work of the fireplace. The glass he held rolled from his hand, shattering on the floor silently, and the vodka stained the carpet to a darker shade of even darker red. I slowly moved across the room to a fully shut doorway with my gunned trained ahead of me the whole time until I reached the door. I reached out for the gold colored handle, slowly pushed it down, and began pushing open the door once again to be greeted by total darkness. I watched as a beam of golden light began to cut in the darkness across a dark blue carpet and up a lighter blue wall with my silhouette totally hidden by how I pressed myself against the door. Before I could open it all the way I heard the rustling of what sounded like sheets.

"Любимая?" I heard the distinctive voice of a woman ask "Что Вы нуждаетесь в меде?" I heard her continue.

I froze as I heard soft footsteps making their way across the carpet to the door. I once again let my M4 hang by it's strap before slowly reaching for the knife I kept in my belt: this wasn't going to be pretty. It was another one of those times were I would look back and wonder what the younger and less experienced me would have thought about this. My mother always taught me that I should respect women and never be abusive or cruel, it was one of those life lessons that sticks with you after you move out if you're smart. The woman on the other side of the door was probably a woman with either good intentions for the man I had just killed or she had simply been interested in gifts and money, only those two options could have made her willing to come all the way out here to see him. Maybe it was his wife though, who had come out all the way here just so she could see her beloved husband. She had known he was probably lonely and so she had arranged it with his commanders that she would be able to make sure that he could at least enjoy himself a little while he was away from home.

I felt the door pulled further open...and I didn't even wait to see her reaction to me.

I felt her body shake with her ragged gasping, her hands pressed to my chest, and her legs losing their strength. If this had been when I had first enlisted in the Army I might have felt bad, almost sick over the fact that I had just stabbed a woman in one of her lungs. Instead I just held her close as I slowly lowered in to a crouch so that I could set her down without possibly causing anymore physical damage then I had already done, such as cracking her skull open. After I set her down I sheathed my knife, grabbed my M4, and once more proceeded in to the bedroom with a wary and observant eye. As I entered I found a large bed with a nightstand on either side at the head of the bed, a doorway that was open revealing a private bathroom, a closet, and the door to what I could only assume was the next room on this floor. I proceeded for that door in the same fashion as I had all the others.

_"Donn, this is Alicia: I've just cleared the second room and I'm moving in on the third, how about you?"_ Alicia asked.

"Same here." Was all I said in reply.

As I slowly pushed this door open I was greeted with what looked to be a guest room that was currently used for storage. There were various dolls, lamps, pieces of furniture, another bed, a few dressers, and at least two mirrors were all around the room. It was obviously of little use to me so I carefully began walking amongst the items about the room, not wanting to make any more noise then I already had, and I also didn't want to alert anybody who might be in the next room. As I approached the door I was cautious just like before, slowly opening it, and watching as a faint blue glow began to cut in to the room with a wider and wider arc until I had fully opened the door.

The room was empty of life but it was obvious that this room was important to the man I had just killed with how thoroughly cleaned it was. The white walls had a few other trophies similar to the ones in the room where I had killed the man, there was a nice looking leather couch there, and a mini refrigarator in one corner of the room. In front of the doorway and across the room from it sat a large and expensive looking oak desk with an equally expensive looking computer on top of it. I shut the door behind me and made sure to lock it before crossing the room to the computer where I sat down.

"Guys, this is team three: I found a computer here, I'm going to look for the files." I said.

_"Rodger that Donn, keep us updated."_ 1st Lieutenant Ibarra replied.

_"This is team two, we're beginning to clear the building holding the Lieutenant now."_ Tyler came over.

"How are you doing Alicia?" I asked.

_"Nothing down here, I'm moving to the stairway, and I'll keep you covered from there."_ She responded.

"Okay." I said.

I promptly looked to the computer, shaking the mouse to deactivate the screen-saver of a Russian flag waving in the wind with a clear blue sky behind it. I was greeted with a similar still-frame photo as the background but ignored it as I brought up the man's start menu, thanking my father for encouraging me to take all those foreign language classes in high school and college. I instantly saw the icon for his e-mail service and figured that would be the best place to start. When I brought it up I had been hit with the initial fear that I would have to try and work out his log-in name and password but as it loaded I saw that he had accidentally left himself logged in, for which I was grateful.

Most of the e-mails looked non-important with topics referring to shipments of things as mundane as winter combat boots, there were several that referred to the destruction of the jet-fuel, but before all those there was one that caught my eye which was simply labeled 'Американский спутник' as the subject or 'the American satellite'. I opened it and was greeted with several blocks of text. I did a quick overview of it's content and determined that it was in fact what I was looking for. I searched all the drawers of the desk until I managed to find a collection of blank CDs and empty cases. I used one and copied the email in to the CD before tucking it in the case for save keeping in my vest.

"This is team three, we have the data, and we are extracting now." I said.

_"Rodger that team three, how are you doing team two?"_ Was Lieutenant Ibarra's reply.

_"We're just outside the room where they're holding the Lieutenant: preparing to breach."_ Tyler was whispering as he spoke.

I stood up and headed for the door once more, the lock automatically coming undone as I pulled the door open. I wasted almost no time moving amongst the stored furniture in the next room, making way for the door I had left open, rushing through the bedroom, and hopping over the dead woman's body. Now that I had achieved the objective I wanted to spend as little time as I possibly could hanging around the area in case another officer on the base came by for a late night visit, or something else that could compromise the mission happened. As I came to the top of the stairs I saw Alicia crouching at the base, looking out of place against the hard-wood floor in her winter camouflage. She glanced over her shoulder at me as I came rushing down the stairs and once I was down we both headed out the back door once more, in to the storm. It seemed ridiculous that we had found the information so easily but I wasn't about to question it.

"_This is team three, we have the Lieutenant, and we'll make our way for the extraction as soon as he is suited up."_ Tyler came on, sounding excited.

"_Rodger that, don't waste any time."_ Lieutenant Ibarra ordered.

"This is team three, we're making best speed for the extraction site now." I whispered as Alicia and I snuck through the snow once again.

We moved quickly away from the house, not wanting to be caught by any patrols that might happen by to see if the officer was alright. We took a different route then the one that we had gone on before, at one point crossing an ice and snow-packed dirt road. We avoided the runway where satellite imagery had shown a large concentration of engineers and soldiers all gathering around the smoldering remains, attempting to fix the runway and other collateral damage that had been done by the blast. We moved in between several buildings and storage containers before we found ourselves moving along the fence once again until we had found the hole that our team had made for our infiltration. I signaled Alicia and we both took positions crouching on either side of the hole in the fence as we looked out in to the storm with our thermal goggles.

"This is team three, do you want us to stay and cover team two's extraction Lieutenant?" I asked.

"_Sounds like a good idea team three, make sure that they get out safely."_ Lieutenant Ibarra replied.

From there it was just a matter of waiting silently, watching the occasional thermal image of a passing patrol or jeep, and looking out for a three-man group that would be team two with the CIA spook in tow. We waited for five minutes and during the entire time I was thanking God for the modern technology that kept me from freezing to death in this icy weather. As I watched the area I soon saw a thermal signature that I could easily recognize as a person's head appear from around the corner of a building. It ducked away again but only for a minute before the person emerged with two others close in tow and I could only assume that it was Tyler and Reese escorting the CIA operative out. They wasted no time in crossing the distance between us and the first place where I had seen them, only stopping once to allow a jeep to pass by before crossing the road, and arriving at our location. No words were exchanged as Alicia and I waved them through the hole in the fence before following through ourselves.

From there we started out away from the base in the direction of the faint thermal signatures that we knew were Lieutenant Ibarra and Robert. We made our way to them at best possible speed, watching as they observed our approach. Once we were close enough to actually see them in detail I watched as Russel waved at us to join up, and once we had we wasted no time in getting as far away from the base as we possibly could. We were going to recover our skiing equipment, including the extra set for the spook for the scenario in which we recovered him like we had, and then we were going to head down the mountains to a pre-designated extraction zone via a helicopter. The mission had gone off flawlessly without setting off any alarms or needing to deploy the explosives Robert had set up. Later tonight the Russians would find the dead bodies left behind along with the explosives, there would probably be some face-palming at having been infiltrated successfully back-to-back, and there would be many people who would probably get chewed out.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This is one of the modern chapters, obviously. This chapter took me a long time to write, most of it being written in small spurts of one or two paragraphs at a time, but now that it's actually up I feel _soooo_ relieved...except when I consider the prospect of the next chapter. This one was easy since I already knew where I wanted to go with it in the process of writing the first one but I had intended for writing the flashback mission to give me time to think of where to go next but so far I can't any think of even a title for it so any suggestions from my readers will be welcomed. However, keep in mind that just because you suggest something doesn't mean I _have_ to use it, though don't let that discourage you.

_**Disclaimers:**_ Since I realized I haven't put this in the last few chapters I might as well put it here. In writing this story I make no claim to the Call of Duty franchise, the company that developed and produced it or any of the characters or symbols therein. The only things which I can claim to be of my own imagination are the characters of the Trust and some operatives who they interact with in the story.


	4. Chapter 3: Critical Transit

**Chapter 3: Critical Transit**

_[1st Army Research Division satellite systems loading]_

_[Tracking, Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon]_

_[Status: Alive]_

_[Location: Northeastern Virginia, USA]_

_[Unit: 1st Army Research Division, aka 'the Trust']_

_.  
_

_Remember those plans for the ACS you pulled out of Kazakhstan?_

_It turns out we got them too late to make a difference._

_We knew that the Russian government was gong to try and crack the module before the inevitable recovery mission but we thought that it had been recovered before they had time, but we were wrong. They managed to crack it before the members of TF 141 could recover it. Most of the important parts of the plans we recovered were in code so that by the time we managed to decrypt the message's true purpose it was too late, we had already put the module back in place, and the Russians were already heading for the United States. They already have paratroopers, planes, and tanks on both coasts. The Deputy Director of Operations was being ferried by helicopter to a safe-house via a helicopter from the recently reactivated 23rd Infantry Division...but he got shot by Russian surface-to-air missiles before he could get there. Thankfully there were members of both the 75th Ranger Regiment and various regular Army units were able to converge on his location to successfully extract him from the crash site before the Russians could get to him._

_They left him with an Army unit just outside of the DC area who were supposed to send a unit to escort the DDO to his destination. Unfortunately the unit he was with has come under heavy assault from Russian forces that have prevented them from doing so. All of the attempts to get a helicopter in to him have met failure because of a heavy Russian AA blanket over the area and the land-based supply runs have met heavy resistance, meaning we can't risk having the DDO go on one of those in case the Russians manage to capture or kill him. Special operations units like SEALs, Green Berets, and even the Pararescue Jumpers are too busy elsewhere to get him themselves so that means we're the only ones who can pull him out of the fire. We've got an MRAP truck and a HMMWV that we can use to get him out to safety while more of the boys from the Army try to make way so they can help their friends with t he DDO._

_So that's it, good luck, and stay safe out there: Ivan isn't sparing any civilians so I'm sure you'll all run in to a hell of a lot of trouble if they find you out there._

_Oh and gentlemen, remember: you're representing the 23rd Americal division, make 'em proud._

_.  
_

_

* * *

.  
_

_**"Critical Transit"  
Day 5 - 04:00:00  
Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon  
The Trust  
Northeastern Virginia, U.S.A.**_

"Are we ready to go?" Lieutenant Ibarra didn't even bother to look at me as we jogged to the waiting HMMWV and MRAP that had been given to us for this mission.

"Yeah: the equipment is loaded, the mounted guns are ready, and everybody is just waiting for your go." I replied.

The MRAP was fully loaded up with most of the equipment and it had extra medical supplies for Reese in case anybody such as Raptor were injured to a point that his standard kit couldn't fix them. The HMMWV was the up-armored variant to protect the crew inside, it had what gear that wasn't in the MPAR in it's cargo compartment, and instead of the standard minigun or M240 medium machine gun which normally graced the top of such a vehicle in the United States military it had been armed with a tube launched, optically tracked, and wire data linked guided missile launcher: a TOW guided missile launcher in more common terms. The crew had been assigned between the two vehicles in the following manner, with our squad and a small amount of other add-on members from the rest of the Trust: Corporal Persley Yoakum would be driving the HMMWV that was going to be operating under the call-sign 'Dispatch', Lieutenant Ibarra was going to be riding shotgun, Robert would be operating the TOW, and Lance Corporal Derek Woods would be in the back seat to hand missiles up to Robert.

Meanwhile Sergeant Gary Harris was assigned to drive the MPAR during the mission and occasionally taking the lead to bust through obstacles when necessary, I was going to be riding shotgun, Alicia was assigned to the roof-mounted M240 medium machine gun, and Reese was going to be in back so that he could attend to Raptor in case he was injured when we picked him up or if he got injured during the trip to the designated extraction zone. When I had first been told about this mission I had felt skeptical and almost hopeless, watching my own home state crumbling so easily against advancing Russian forces, but now I was starting to be more assured about the success of this mission, though the reports of Russian armor in the area still made me a little nervous. However, that was why Lieutenant Ibarra had insisted on one of the vehicles being armed with a TOW: when you plan to go through bear country it's a good idea to bring a bear rifle, even if you aren't hunting for them. Looking back on it some people might find it surprising that the thoughts of my family all living on my childhood home on the coast of Virginia never crossed my mind from the first reports of fighters over American soil to when I was pulling on my combat equipment to start fighting back as possible.

They had hit us by surprise: that was what mattered to myself and the others now.

I pulled myself up in to the passenger-side seat of the truck. The convoy was already starting before I had even shut the door: the DDO was one of the few people who even knew about our existence in the government anymore, not to mention that he was also a member of the very exclusive group that could give our commander orders. We didn't want to waste any time in getting to the location of the Army unit as fast as we possibly could, not wanting to risk the unit being overrun before we could get there, and thus failing our mission completely. We couldn't accept that outcome because we were some of the best: we just didn't fail, it wasn't in our nature. I knew that every single person with me had been trained with the best techniques and technology that the United States government could offer since it's conception in the extremely early sixties. We had an exemplary performance record that we didn't plan to spoil with such an epic failure as having the DDO die from a Russian invasion when we had been entrusted with his well-being and making sure that he made it to safety.

_"Iron Taxi, Dispatch."_ Lieutenant Ibarra's voice came over the radio.

"Go Dispatch." I replied curtly.

_"It looks like it was a good idea that we have the TOW."_ Lieutenant Ibara said, tacking a small spout of nervous laughter on the end.

"Why's that?" I asked.

_"Some of the local units are saying they've seen or heard Russian armor in the area."_ Lieutenant Ibarra said.

"Well that's just great." I replied, sighing.

I looked out to the night sky. I watched as beams of spotlights cut in to the air to illuminate the storm of aircraft overhead, streaks of tracer fire arched up in to the sky, and I could occasionally see the glow of anti-air missiles or fighter jets exchanging fire with each other. As I looked at the warfare a hand reached up for the night vision goggles that were mounted to the top of my helmet. The sun had yet to rise in our area, we had planned that on purpose because we didn't want to be easily seen by hostile forces, so along with going during the pre-dawn hours every single source of illumination was covered, dimmed, or just shut off completely if possible. That meant that Gary was probably going to have an eye-straining time of trying to drive and as I looked over at him I could tell with the way that he clenched his jaw while he surveyed our surroundings that he was focused. Meanwhile when I glanced back I could see Alica's legs as she scanned our surroundings from the shielded turret while Reese sat on one of the two benches in the back with plenty of packs of supplies and some medical equipment in the back with him. I looked forward out the windshield and I could see Robert as he looked at his surroundings from behind the roof-mounted TOW launcher, ever vigilant.

One thing about night vision goggles is that they don't allow for good vision in every sense of the term. Yes they could make it easier to see various things in the darkness of your surroundings but because of how they were designed they gave a horrible restriction to a person's peripheral vision. Because of this as we started passing through thicker and thicker groupings of houses it was almost impossible for me to see the Russian jeep moving a street over from us. Apparently the commander of the small scouting party had been scanning the suburbs for American forces moving through the area in order to warn their commander of any fresh forces coming to face the Russians. They had seen the plane dropping the vehicles and had moved in to a range of around one or two miles to observe what was happening, and even though they didn't know who we were exactly they probably knew special operations when they saw them. Of course if they had any info on active and known special forces units then they were probably a bit thrown off by the markings of the Americal infantry division. We didn't know it but the leader of the patrol hadn't thought the incident worth reporting in yet, to him it was just something that he had to observe to the fullest extent possible. At the time I didn't see them but when I glanced over to my right there was no missing their shapes between the buildings.

"Dispatch, Iron Taxi." I said, watching the jeeps as we approached a curve in the road.

_"Go Iron Taxi."_ Lieutenant Ibarra replied.

"I have two possible Russian scouts on our right flank: do you want us to engage?" I asked.

_"Negative: there's a right turn for them up ahead, they'll have to break off or cut through the yards in to an open park if they want to keep up."_ Lieutenant Ibarra answered.

"Confirmed Dispatch." I responded tersely.

It might have seemed like a bad call and in any other situation we would have engaged the scouts to try and prevent them from giving details to their commander, but in this case by the time the Russians could afford to pull a jet or helicopter from combat to blow us off the road we would be gone from the current area, and probably able to slip in to the streets of the heavier suburbs and city. Besides, even if it wasn't aircraft, and they did try to send some of the tanks reported in the area, in the same way as with the helicopters we would be gone before they got to our current location, and w had a missile launcher to take out any that might find us on our way to or from the American unit. So for now Alicia just kept her eye on them from within her shielded turret, watching them through a rectangle of bullet-proof glass, and just making sure that they didn't make any sudden or hostile moves towards us. Of course if they fired on us it wasn't like we were just going to ignore them: we would light them up like a Christmas tree to make sure that they never did it again. However, for now they weren't shooting at us, and we were in no mood to change that.

I glanced at the low-light GPS system that was mounted on the dashboard in front of me, unaware that as we approached the area where the Russian scouts were forced to turn off that their commander had radioed us in finally, and that there had been a quick response team a mile ahead of us that dispatched two of their BTR-80 APCs to intercept us. Instead I just checked and rechecked the route, looked out the windows to observe our surroundings, and occasionally glanced back to see how Rees and Alicia were doing. Meanwhile the HMMWV continued ahead of us as we began approaching the much tighter turns of the actual suburbs, slowly down drastically from our recent highway speed. I kept watching the buildings and the rest of our surroundings diligently...until I looked in front of us. Three blocks away at a four-way intersection sat an eight-wheeled monstrosity: a BTR-80A, capable of carrying ten armed men in to battle, and armed with a 30mm 2A72 autocannon on it's roof that could wreak havoc on exposed infantry or unarmored targets. While Lieutenant Ibarra yelled both at his own driver and at Gary to turn right, breaking off.

Alicia opened fire rather needlessly, her well trained soldiering instincts not _allowing her_ to just stand there without fighting back against the threat. The BTR began firing as we all turned to the right but before it could really start hitting us the HMMWV was already entirely protected by surrounding houses while the only shot that actually hit the MPAR only shook us all up on the inside while leaving the exterior with nothing but burn marks from the impact against armor designed to defend against things like mines and IEDs at point-blank range. We began flooring it through the town while Alicia looked back and informed us that we had another BTR on our tail at around the same time as it's explosive rounds began hitting the road around us. Unfortunately we were between the Russian APC and the TOW launcher so Robert couldn't take out the metal beheamoth until he got a clear line of sight and a positively confirmed lock. I listened as Alicia continued to fire while we kept going as fast as possible through the city streets.

_"Iron Taxi: I have a plan to lose this guy!"_ Lieutenant Ibarra sounded understandably rushed _"There's a gas station on our right, coming up!"_

"So?" I asked.

_"When that tin bastard is near it, blow the thing, and we should be able to out-run the blast!"_ Lieutenant Ibarra explained.

"Are you insane, sir?" I couldn't believe what he was saying: when the underground storage went off the entire block would probably get cooked.

_"It's either that or you can try and fit that over-sized coffin of yours to the side in all these yards!"_ Lieutenant Ibarra snapped.

"Fine, it's done!"

I looked back at Alicia and patted her leg to get her attention.

"Alicia!" I called up, still needing to get her attention.

"What?" I heard her call, angry and focused, over the fire of her machine gun.

"There's a gas station coming up, shoot the pumps!" I yelled.

"Are you insane?" Alicia looked down at me.

"Lieutenant's orders!" I responded.

Alicia bit her lower lip but gave me a nod as she pivoted the machine gun around to the front where she could look out for the gas station. I looked out the front window and I saw a Nova gas station approaching on our right with four perfectly intact gas pumps. We came up on it fast and passed it even faster as the HMMWV and the MRAP both began to pick up speed. I heard Alicia's machine gun open fire again for only a half second at the longest, then it was followed by a thundering roar as the gas reserves underneath the pumps blowing up as well, and I looked back to watch as Alicia turned the turret away before ducking inside the truck. We floored it down the straightest path we possibly could and I could almost imagine the flames that silhouetted us from behind as they licked across the yards and houses around that station in an ever expanding fury. We went as fast as we possibly could and we didn't slow down until we were almost three blocks away and had to in order to make a tight turn ahead of us without tipping one of the vehicles. As we did turn I was able to look out my window to see the flash-burned grass and houses, all the fire gone, and the BTR sitting on the street in front of the station with the crew probably literally cooked inside it's metal walls.

_"Okay, on to Raptor."_ Lieutenant Ibarra sounded relieved.

I leaned back against my seat with a sigh as some of the adrenaline in my system began to wean off now that we weren't being chased by an APC around Virginia. We couldn't stop and relax though, and we had to keep moving in to the city where the American and Russian army were fighting it out in bloody combat. Glancing at the GPS system in front of me I could see that the marked location of the Army unit's current position, where the DDO was waiting for us to get him to safety. As we kept going down the roads soon we could see cars and other debris positioned on the street in such a way that it slowed us down significantly, past that we could see barbed wire fences set up, and it wasn't hard to recognize the pile of sandbags housing a mounted machine gun with a man who was tracking us intently as we approached what was obviously the unit's perimeter. Now we had to lie to our fellow soldiers and convince a bunch of edgy and combat-weary men that we weren't infiltrators trying to kill an important member of the US Central Intelligence Agency but rather members of the unit tasked with his retrieval.

.

* * *

.

_**Day 5 - 04:35:00**__  
__**Captain Frank Weiss  
1st Army Infantry Division  
Northeastern Virginia, USA**_

As I pried sweat-filled rubber gloves from my hand my weary mind somehow found itself drifting to how this was _not_ the kind of day I had been planning for my stay on the east coast. Segments of the Big Red One had been sent on to the east coast as part of a training exercise for two months which I was to take part in before we were to be shipped in to Afghanistan to supplement the "war on terror" that was still going the same way that it had been when it started a few years ago. If it hadn't been for the Russian invasion I would have been counting away this final week before getting on a Navy ship to sail in to the Middle East where I would practice my military-trained skills of being a medical professional but now I was dealing with floods of wounded Americans and a mysterious man adorned in an expensive suit and bullet-proof vest who the Rangers that dropped him off identified as the Deputy Director of Operations Jack Brantley of the Central Intelligence Agency. Apparently he was in the process of being evacuated when he had been shot down by Russian anti-air systems, rescued by a joint force of regular Army soldiers and Rangers, and then brought here where I was ordered to make sure that he was stabilized and okay for when his extraction could finally be carried out.

As I looked about at the mostly empty beds and the stabilized soldiers in those that were filled, I decided that it was probably okay for me to take a quick trip to the mess tent for a cup of coffee, but as I started for the flap of the medical tent it suddenly opened to admit three men who I had never seen before. They were in standard Army uniform, rifles held loosely in front of them, sleeves up to their elbows, and they all had an expression that I felt was familiar from somewhere even though I couldn't name it. The closest man had the rank of Lieutenant with 'Ibarra' on his name tag. He looked to be around five feet and eleven inches in height, he had slim features, and a clean-shaven head. He was obviously a well trained and experienced soldier who I was willing to bet had probably served a few tours in the Middle East for this proclaimed "war on terror" that we were all being trusted to fight by our government.

The second man, on Lieutenant Ibarra's right, looked to be around six feet in height. His rank markings and name tag identified him as a Corporal Middleton. His hazel eyes scanned the tent with the exact same look as his Lieutenant while he ran a gloved hand through his mop of raven black hair that looked like it was barely being kept within regulations. I could tell from a quick glance at some of his visible equipment that he was obviously a combat medic. He came across with a sort of reduced air from that of the Lieutenant. It was obvious that he saw combat but whether it wasn't as much or simply not as intense as the Lieutenant's experiences was hard to tell. Then again it could have been that I was simply underestimating him because of how young he looked in comparison to Lieutenant Ibarra.

The third man was Staff Sergeant Kenyon. He looked to be maybe an inch or two over six feet and he seemed to carry the same air as the Lieutenant, even if it wasn't a bit more intense. With the way he carried himself it struck me that given his rank the man was probably the platoon sergeant for the Lieutenant who he had followed in to my tent. He was wearing normal gear like the rest of them but I noticed that while the other two didn't even have their helmets on I couldn't see much of the Sergeant's face. Atop his head he wore a digital camouflage bush hat though by the sides I could tell that he had almost orange-red colored hair, he had a pair of orange-hued ballistics glasses that made it hard to tell what color his eyes were even though they looked green, and he wore a camouflaged gator neck that hid all of his face below his nose. He went to brush something from his shoulder and the sharpness of his movement drew a quick glance from me, which is when I noticed something odd. He had a chest-mounted Colt. 45 semiautomatic, these days the only guys who carried those were specialists of a very specific type.

"Captain Weiss?" Lieutenant Ibarra asked.

All three men gave me a salute which I lazily returned.

"Yes, what is it?" I asked.

"I'm 1st Lieutenant Ibarra with the 23rd infantry division, my unit was tasked with escorting the Director." Lieutenant Ibarra motioned to Mr. Brantley "He was shot down yesterday."

"So I assume you are here to extract him?" I asked.

"Yes sir, is he okay to move?" Lieutenant Ibarra asked.

"Well he seems fine, but I haven't really had time to look at him." I explained.

"We have equipment with us for that sir: we just need to know if it's okay to move him right now." Lieutenant Ibarra replied.

"I guess it would be okay: I can have some of my staff help you get him to your transport." I offered.

"No need sir, that's why I brought these two men with me." Lieutenant Ibarra turned to Corporal Middleton "Corporal: get the litter." Lieutenant Ibarra ordered.

With a salute the medic disappeared from the tent flap again.

"Russian AA is too thick here: how did you boys get in?" I asked "It couldn't have been by helicopter like before."

"We had to cut through the suburbs with a HMMWV and an MRAP." Lieutenant Ibarra replied "We had a run in with some Russian armor but we took care of them."

The medic came back in once again, a partially folded litter under one arm. He and Sergeant Kenyon moved past their Lieutenant to stand beside the bed of Director Brantley. Lieutenant Ibarra stepped up as they opened the litter, picked up the director in bridal-style carry, and gently laid him on to the litter. With a salute from the Lieutenant the three men departed from the ten, moving out in to the darkness to return to their transports in order to get the Director out. As I watched them leave one of my assistants, a beautiful young Lieutenant who had gotten her commission and assignment only a few months before the hell we were in now, came up beside me after having just made sure all the patients in the tent were okay. About the time that she came to stand beside me something dawned on me. Their general expressions, their attitudes, how to-the-point they were with talking, the side-arm, that gator neck that one of them wore, and an overall weird vibe I got from them.

"Those weren't grunts." I said, hooking my thumbs in to my pockets.

"What do you mean, sir?" The Lieutenant asked.

"Just look at them." I explained "My dad was in the Green Berets back in Vietnam and I remembered that in all his photos he had this strange expression on his face, a kind of sleepy eyed grin, and it's the exact same look I saw on those boys." I then grinned "Besides that, even with his gator neck I could see that beard of his sticking out: we haven't been fighting that long."

The Lieutenant gave me a quirked brow and a small grin before I walked out of the tent to head for the mess, I really needed coffee now.

.

* * *

.

_**Day 5 - 04:45:00  
Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon  
The Trust  
Northeastern Virginia, USA**_

As we drove away from the base, on a different route then the one we had first taken, I couldn't help but feel a little bit relieved: the start of a strange cycle of feelings that each and every one of us seemed to go through in various degrees of intensity near the end of a mission. Once all the objectives had been complete you started to feel relieved as you headed for the extraction site, as you got closer to it a new surge of stress at the possibilities of what could go wrong began to build up again, and you couldn't be relieved of that feeling until you were on the helicopter out of the area. I kept scanning our surroundings as we continued through the streets to a pre-designated extraction zone outside the city. From there we would leave the vehicles for a clean-up crew, board a waiting Army Chinook with the DDO, and then we would fly him to another point away from the coast where a plane would be able to take him to a place where he would be able to command much more effectively. That would be once we reached the field, however, and so right now we all still had to take care as we made our way through the streets to the city limits once again.

According to Reese the Deputy Director was perfectly fine save for a few scrapes, cuts, and bruises. When the DDO had come to consciousness from a stress-induced deep sleep he hadn't known who we were at first, which was funny in a way considering that he was one of an extremely small handful of people outside of the Trust who knew of our existence. Once we had explained who we were and what was happening I swore I had never seen a man be more relieved then him as he had made himself comfy on one of the benches with a pack of supplies as a pillow while Reese did a more thorough examination for anything that he or the Army medics might have missed like slowly leaking internal bleeding or other life-threatening damage. When he had found none he had me inform the Lieutenant that the DDO was perfectly fine, there was nothing to worry about, and that we all couldn't wait until we were able to pull our collective asses out of this mess for the time being.

Besides that, those Army boys had made me nervous. I still hadn't shaved the beard I kept from a few tours in Afghanistan and so it wasn't like I could shave before entering the base in the rush we had been in. There was only a small collective of people who were allowed to have relaxed grooming standards and we didn't want to go stepping on any of the toes in Delta by trying to pass off as one of them. So I had just put on the gator neck before Reese and I had gotten out of the truck while hoping that the extra handgun I carried with me didn't stick out to anybody in the moment: I could only hope that it was the case so I didn't start any new rumors flowing in the military about their officially denied unit of special forces operators. As I sat in the passenger seat of the MRAP I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind while listening to the DDO as he occasionally spoke to Reese about topics that I wasn't interested enough to listen in on in short spouts of speech to which we had all become accustomed to out of some odd and seemingly mandatory requirement of being in the Trust.

_"The extraction zone is one mile out, keep sharp."_ Lieutenant Ibarra came over the radio.

"Yes, sir." I replied.

I kept scanning our surroundings as we continued through the suburbs, watching the ever diminishing amount of houses around us, and making sure that we weren't going to get attacked by another Russian armored vehicle. Eventually we reached the end of the buildings and found ourselves with nothing but a short wooden fence separating us from the field in which the extraction helicopter would arrive to pick us up, extracting the DDO to safety. The HMMWV slowed down to let the MRAP past and we plowed through the wooden fence before the HMMWV followed through the hole made out on to the field. We spread out from one another to avoid being taken out by something like a chance missile fired from a Russian anti-tank gunner or something similar. Then we came to a stop while Alicia and Robert continued to scan our surroundings with their respective mounted weapons. We didn't want to take any chances when we were this close to being extracted and so the DDO didn't even exit the safe confines of the MRAP until Lieutenant Ibarra confirmed over the radio that the Chinook charged with our extraction was inbound.

Until then I simply held my M4 close and watched both the skies and the nearby road for any signs of movement. We had turned off the engines for the time being to reduce both our noise and heat signatures while we waited for the extraction helicopter to pick us up. Eventually I heard the sounds of a helicopter approaching through the cupola that Alicia had been standing in for the good portion of an hour. We all looked up to the sky and watched the approaching Army helicopter through our night vision goggles, it's exterior lights off, and with the barely illuminated face of the pilot and co-pilot giving any signs of illumination as the helicopter proceeded to slowly turn around in mid air before gently touching down on the side of us opposite of the road. At that moment we wasted no time in moving: everybody was already piling out of our vehicles before the helicopter had fully touched down and we were already rushing Deputy Director Jack Brantley up the ramp before it had fully lowered so that we could get off the ground that much faster, a notion which the flight chief obviously understood and was visibly grateful for.

Sitting down on a seat opposite of Lieutenant Ibarra, I watched as Alicia moved next to me. She spread out across several seats and proceeded to rest her head on my lap, closing her eyes, and drifting in to a light sleep after having been awoken so rudely by the Russian invasion. Some people in the regular service, or readers of a particularly poorly written story might have interpreted this as a sign of romance, but to us it was simply the fact that Alicia deemed my lap to be a more comfortable head-rest for her nap than the chair. In my time with the Trust I had seen this many times, and not just between male and female "Trustees." I had even seen men sleeping in similar positions with other men simply because something else comfortable was too far away to be convenient or because any other options were only going to cause extreme discomfort and neck pain when the person woke up. While most men would have been thrown off by this seemingly subtle homosexual behavior, to which I could imagine the gay fiction of men at war even as I thought this, I didn't much mind such activities...though that probably came with the service.

Besides that, Alicia was an extremely pretty girl, and so I didn't really mind her sleeping on my lap anyways. She was around five feet and ten inches in overall height with dark red hair that she kept tied in a neat pony tail unlike the raggedy, exotic, or otherwise non regulation hair styles of other members in the unit. Her face was graced with slim and petite facial features that wouldn't make her look like a black ops soldier if you didn't see her in combat gear. She was extremely friendly and a strikingly pretty woman. Besides that she had this fascination for art in the form of coal and chalk drawings that she practiced whenever she could, obviously when not deployed in to the field. However, despite what some people outside of the Trust who would look at this might think I saw absolutely _no_ potential for a romantic foray of _any_ kind with her or any other women I had met in the Trust. None of us could really even afford husbands, wives, or any really sort of families with the jobs we held. We would have been gone from home for weeks or months, or even a year at a time without being able to tell those families where we were going or why so it just wouldn't work out.

Pushing all of these thoughts to the back of my mind, I leaned my head back, and relaxed as we flew to safety once again.

.

* * *

.

**Author's Notes:** Wow...this chapter was actually _really_ hard to get finished. I knew exactly where I wanted to go with it but it took me forever to actually go and do it, I was practically fighting a war with myself, and in the end I do feel that the final product suffered but I still hope it's good enough for you guys. Also, I would like to thank my brother **"Captain Kurt Hoffman**" for a lot of his support and ideas so far throughout the few chapters this story has. Honestly, he really has helped me through more cases of writer's block then he is probably aware of, and besides that he's one of my brothers so I _had_ to have an excuse to work him in to my **"Author's Notes"** for this section somehow. Anyways, as I said before I am always open and appreciative of reviews, suggestions, and any constructive criticism that people have to offer me so go at it. Don't worry though, I'm not going to be like one of those jerks who always demands a certain number of reviews before adding a chapter.


	5. Chapter 4: Spinnaker

**Chapter 4: Spinnaker**

"_**Spinnaker"**_

_**December 7th, 1956**_

_**1st Lieutenant Doug Moses**_

_**1st Army Research Division (The Trust)**_

_**Moscow, Russia**_

I was nervous.

There was no other way that I could describe it right now. I had been from the Air Force PJs so I was used to operating like a special operations soldier, not espionage. When I had been accepted in the Trust I had expected to operate like I had trained to in the Air Force: out in the field, behind enemy lines, in fierce and deadly combat. I don't know how I didn't see it coming but I honestly didn't expect to be living the life of a spy and I certainly didn't expect to find myself in the capitol of Russia, taking part in a highly confidential mission to sneak a pair of scientists and one's family to an airport in order to smuggle them to West Berlin. Those two scientists were Dr. Bertram Beckenbauer, his close friend Dr. Erik Vester, and this also involved Dr. Vester's wife and two daughters.

According to what we had been told during our briefing, the two men had been experts in the various parts of rocket science. They had been scientists for the German government, if that wasn't obvious by their names, and they had the unfortunate luck of being stuck in eastern Berlin when it was split up amongst the various national powers of Russia, France, England, and the United States. The Soviets had jumped on the chance to get two more scientists in order to help with their space program, moving the two men to government provided housing while under the watchful eye of the NKVD in order to try and prevent their contacting any of the western governments.

I don't know how they managed to do it but apparently they had made contact with certain people in DC. They had said who they were and what their situation was, along with the fact that they desired to get out of the Soviet Union. Their deal was that they would gladly help the United States with our own space program if we would be willing to smuggle them out of Moscow, with the catch being that we also had to extract Dr. Vester's family as well. This mission was the kind that would probably be handled by the CIA at any time but there were people in the government who wanted to test the Trust's capabilities in terms of espionage operations.

The NKVD Major's uniform felt somewhat weird on me as my fellow operative, Sergeant Frank Lanier, drove us through the streets of Moscow to the location where we were supposed to meet up with Dr. Vester. Almost all the way across the city another team was making their way to Dr. Beckenbauer's house. After that they were going to head to the airport where they would meet with us, one of the two pilots from amongst our group would grab a plane that had been planted a day ago with the aid of a Russian contact, and we would fly out of Russia as fast as we could. From there we would be able to relax, at least a little, and continue the plane-hopping by grabbing one in east Berlin, then one in London, and we would finally touch down in the United States.

As we drove, I kept scanning the shadows for anything suspicious. If we did happen to run across a patrol car then we would be safe as long as we could keep up our acts, and they fell for the papers that we carried with us. Our only concern was getting out of the general area of town where Dr. Vester was going to be kept once we actually had him and his family. There was a suitcase behind my seat that contained a male and a female uniform for NKVD officers in order to disguise both Dr. Vester and his wife. The major concern would be how to get the two young girls out: our superiors in the CIA had been considering every option that was available but somebody in the planning room would always come up with something that would shake everybody's confidence in whatever plan was being discussed. That meant we had been given the challenge of finding a way to get the girls out...though we had been given the grim reminder that Dr. Vester was our priority for this mission.

We weren't planning on leaving anybody behind, however.

The scenery changed from bars, government owned stores, and the occasional apartment to the industrial carbon-copy, cut-and-paste looks of countless apartment systems. Each and every one of the buildings was identical in almost every way. Dr. Vester was housed in one of these facilities when the Russians weren't running him endlessly in their labs to make better rocket technology. We pulled through the streets at a reasonable pace and I still kept my eyes on my surroundings. I couldn't see anything dangerous but I couldn't get rid of this feeling that there were people watching us from every darkened window, which I tried to brush of as simple paranoia. Thankfully, if there were people watching us it didn't seem like they were making any move to stop us yet, and so we pulled up in front of the housing complex that held Dr. Vester and his family. To avoid suspicion I sat patiently as Sergeant Lanier stepped out and circled around the car to open my door for me. Once he had, he opened the rear door, and handed me the suitcase containing the uniforms. As he shut the car doors, I began making my way for the front door.

Sergeant Lanier fell in to step right behind me but moving ahead as we got closer in order to hold the door for me. When we stepped through we saw a young woman in what looked to be a female NKVD uniform. It was almost a given fact that during the day the secretary was probably dressed in normal clothes due to the Soviet government's charming self-illusion that nobody knew they watched everybody like a hawk whenever they could. Our visit wasn't planted in to their schedules and that had concerned some people in the CIA but those suspicions had been eliminated due to information provided in _CIA_ briefing rooms, leaving us uninformed. I suddenly found out why as I watched the woman give a mandatory salute just long enough for me to return it before she sat back down in her seat, her eyes cast down to her desk. Since I was such a higher rank than her, she wouldn't _dare_ go to her own superiors out of fear that whatever was going on was very important business that they hadn't informed her of.

We ascended the stairs quickly. We knew exactly what floor Dr. Vester was one and so we didn't even need to take time to read the floor numbers on each set of double-doors until we began to get closer to the sixth floor, not wanting to lose our way in the relative darkness. Once we did reach the dark colored wooden double-doors that marked one of the entrances to the sixth floor of the housing complex, we pushed it open slowly. We moved down the halls quietly, not wanting to risk the possibility of waking up any of the other residents. We knew what room Dr. Vester was in because he had given the CIA his room number as his part in aiding with the planning of his extraction. We kept a close eye on each room number until we finally reached the one that we had been looking for; I gave three gentle knocks, and listened carefully as the silent sound of somebody shuffling across the carpet on the other side could be heard. For the sake of making a government raid easier none of the doors had locks so the room's occupants didn't need to worry about waking anybody with the sound of operating door locks.

When the door opened we were greeted with the site of a woman who I could only assume to be Dr. Vester's wife, Sohpia Vester. She was a short woman at only five feet and seven inches tall with an extremely thin frame, both of which were amplified by the fact that she seemed to be hunched over behind the partially opened the door. Her raven black hair was frizzy and it looked as if she had been at least close to sleeping when we knocked given that she was wearing nightwear. She shared her husband's eye sight it seemed, as she dawned a pair of glasses with one hand, and blinked once or twice as if to clear her vision. To avoid exposing ourselves, the signal to identify us wasn't spoken. Instead it was rather simple: unlike a normal NKVD visit I didn't aggressively "invite" myself in and instead I offered a shake with one gloved hand. She didn't even accept the hand-shake, recognizing that we were the Americans her husband had most likely told her about. She stepped back and opened the door far enough to admit us in to the surprisingly luxurious room.

Dr. Vester emerged from a side door with his daughters under each arm. He was dressed in his own pajamas and slippers, in a similar fashion to his wife. He had similar circular glasses over dark green eyes and pale skin that made the shade of his eyes all the more obvious. He had dark gray hair with only a few remaining dark brown hairs and the top of his head was bald. His face looked like a rail road map, for lack of a better term, and even though he looked tired he was obviously relieved to see us. He gave him only a small smile as I moved in to their living room. I set down the brief case, opened it up, and retrieved the male NKVD uniform. I presented it to Dr. Vester and watched him take it before disappearing in to his bedroom. Next I handed the female uniform to Mrs. Vester and she disappeared behind the bathroom. As she did so I looked to Sergeant Lanier, about to ask him if he was covering the door. I saw that he had already shut it behind us and had unclasped the holster for his pistol in case anybody came barging in.

During all of this their two daughters stayed right where they were. The oldest of the two was Franziska Vester at fourteen years old and the other was Juliane Vester, an eleven year old girl. They were both almost identical twins. Somehow Franziska had managed to fix her blonde hair in to a pony tail while her younger sister had simply left it hanging loose at shoulder length. They both had well-tanned skin, obviously spending much more time outside than either of their parents, and I imagined that once they got older they would both be very beautiful young women...and I just hoped that this mission went well so they wouldn't be growing up _here_. To be honest, as I looked at them I could see that Franziska was trying to keep up an appearance of being totally calm, but Juliane was having a harder time of doing so. I fished inside a pocket of my coat and retrieved a simple candy bar: a luxury I had brought along and planned to enjoy after the mission was over to calm my nerves.

I handed it to Juliane with a smile.

*"Не волнуйтесь, это будет хорошо." I told her.

She gave me a nervous smile and gingerly took the chocolate from my hand. As she peeled it open and broke off a piece to share with her sister, I watched Dr. Vester emerge from the bedroom with his uniform on. He was in a Lieutenant Colonel's uniform, one rank above my own, and he had obviously made sure to put every part of his uniform in it's proper place. A few moments after him, his wife emerged in a female NKVD Sergeant's uniform. I looked at all of them and when I saw that they were already, and that both the doctor and his wife had their pistols secured, I nodded to Sergeant Lanier. He opened the door, securing his holster before doing so to avoid suspicion. So far we had gotten half of the mission done without any sort of complications in the plan and now all that was left was to head to the fire escape...and just hope that secretary downstairs hadn't called in to her superiors about our appearance yet. I pushed that worrying though to the back of my mind, grabbed the suitcase once again, and headed out in to the hallway.

The six of us moved quietly with Sergeant Lanier bringing up our rear, Franziska and Juliane staying with Mrs. Vester, Dr. Vester going slightly ahead of them, and then I was at the head of the group while we began heading down the stairs again. We descended to the second floor and once we moved through the set of double-doors that marked the proper floor we began looking for a window to the back of the building. We found the one that exited out on to the fire escape and I gently undid the locks before pulling it open, admitting a chilly pre-dawn breeze inside, and slipping out slowly, Dr. Vester came through after me, we then helped the children through, then we helped Mrs. Vester through, and Sergeant Lanier came through the window last. Then I moved down the ladder to the backyard and the others came in the same order as before. Now we had to continue with the operation. We made our way quickly and quietly out in to the parking lot, Sergeant Lanier opened the trunk, and I motioned to the two girls. Several thick burlap blankets and a spare tire were in the trunk. We quickly ushered the two girls to curl up under the blankets, near the back of the trunk, and then we shut the lid.

After that Sergeant Lanier and Mrs. Vester got in the front seats while Dr. Vester and I took our places in the back seat. If we were stopped by an soldiers then we would simply say that Sergeant Lanier and Mrs. Vester were our personal aids, and that suitcase contained (forged) "urgent orders" from Nikita Khrushchev himself that we had to deliver (forged) documents of "immense importance to the Motherland" to a double-agent in Berlin who was awaiting orders for a mission against American forces in west Berlin. When it came to the two young girls hiding in the trunk, we just hoped that whoever stopped us wouldn't find any reason to look there, and that if they did than they wouldn't look under the blankets. The worst-case scenario was that we would end up in a game of cat-and-mouse with _real_ members of the NKVD and the Soviet military before we could even get to the airport. Once we got to the plane and off the tarmac we would be safe from the threat of capture. We doubted that the Soviets would want to shoot us down with the two scientists on board.

As we pulled out of the parking lot I began to relax. As one of my gloved hands rested on my front left pocket, I suddenly remembered the large wad of Russian rubles kept in my pocket. If we could do so without being seen, I could hand whatever soldier who stopped us more than he would earn in half a year to make sure that any mistakes he saw in our papers were simply figments of his imagination. For all the lack of preparation and the sneaking suspicion that the CIA _wanted_ us to fail, I still had to thank them for providing us with the money. I grinned a little at the though about just how insulting that would be to the Soviet government that I might literally _pay_ them to get this mission complete, but quickly got rid of it in order to turn my face in to a stern and unreadable mask as we drove. I didn't notice the car which started as we left the parking lot and instead simply watched ahead of us as we went through the streets of Moscow at a steady and unsuspicious pace with Sergeant Lanier and the rest of us still thinking we hadn't been seen.

Even though we didn't know that we were being followed, we still took the longest and most complex way to the designated airport that we could. This was simply something we had been taught by the CIA to employ whether we actually thought we were being followed or not. As a result we lost our still undetected tail, the driver having hung too far back from us to keep up through the many turns we took. So that meant that when we pulled up to the gate, we had nobody behind us. I watched as we pulled to a stop and an Army Sergeant came walking up to Sergeant Lanier's door. Sergeant Lanier rolled down his window and began speaking with the sentry. I didn't specifically listen in because I knew that he was simply explaining who he and Mrs. Vester were while also explaining who it was in the back seat. With our cover names, of course, and he presented his own identification to the Sergeant. With a few more moments of talking, Sergeant Lanier motioned to me with his head, and I began rolling down the rear window while the Sergeant waited beside my door. Reaching down for the suitcase, I set it between Dr. Vester and myself, and retrieved the folder containing our false orders.

Once I had done this, I made sure to retrieve the bill-fold from my pocket without it being seen by the soldier for the moment. I took time doing this and disguised it under the act of reading over the orders myself to make sure that I was handing him the proper folder. I quietly slipped the money in to the folder, making sure he could see it this time as I extended the folder to him, and gave him a courteous nod. He examined the orders quickly and I watched him pocket the money just as quickly. Once he had done so, he gave me a nod which I could tell was to both acknowledge the "orders" and thanking me for the money, before he looked to the gate and shouted for them to open up. He returned the folder to me and I secured it in the suitcase before we began pulling through the gate to the hanger where the second team and our ride out of the country both waited for us. We pulled to a stop one hanger away and parked in such a way that the trunk faced away from the gate before getting out.

"I'll check to make sure the second team is ready." Sergeant Lanier said.

I nodded and Dr. Vester, Mrs. Vester, and myself all came to stand by the trunk. I retrieved a pack of Russian-made cigarettes from my coat and lit up, offering one to both Dr. Vester and his wife. He refused, but to my surprise his wife happily accepted one. While we stood there Sergeant Lanier made his way to the hanger where the plane was waiting. Meanwhile I simply stood at the back of the car, occasionally glancing to the gate. It was a good five minutes before Sergeant Lanier returned...and suddenly trouble started. As he returned and was about to tell us that the second team had the plane ready, a second car pulled up to the gate. I watched the commander at the post approach the guard and even though I couldn't hear what they were saying, I saw him look up, and then point to us before he continued speaking to the occupants of the car. He then gave a grim nod and I watched as he barked orders at two other sentries. They began making their way towards us and I looked to Sergeant Lanier as he began opening the truck.

"Get the family to the hanger, I'll hold them off." I ordered.

I watched as Sergeant Lanier noddd and almost yanked Franziska and Juliane from the trunk of the car. He made sure that the children were in front of him and began to walk quickly for the hanger once again. During this, the two sentries had began to shout at us to stop. I watched them as they realized we weren't going to do so and one raised his rifle. I drew my pistol, took aim, and fired three quick rounds. I hit him at around center-mass and as he fell his finger caught the trigger of his AK-47, the distinctive sound of the rifle echoing through the night along with my own shots, and the muzzle flash lighting up his partner as he began running towards me with his rifle raised. The other sentries began opening fire and I watched as several men came from out of the car, two of them holding rifles of their own. I could hear rounds hitting the pavement and the car around me, though I still managed to take close aim at the second of the original sentries. I fired two more rounds and watched as he fell forward, rolling on the tarmac.

I turned around just in time to see something terrible. I saw a flash of dark color from Mrs. Vester's thigh and watched as she fell to the ground with a cry of surprise. Her husband looked back and would have probably run to retrieve her but Sergeant Lanier kept the entire family running forward. That meant that it was up to me. I fired the remainder of my magazine behind me as I ran to the fallen form of Dr. Vester's wife. I holstered the pistol and reached down for her, scooping her in to my arms, and running for the hanger as the sound of running propellers began to cut through the air. The hangar door was open and the plane, a civilian Lisunov Li-2, began to taxi out on the runway with one door still open. One of the two Trust members of the second team was leaning out of the doorway, beckoning to me with one arm. As I got closer I saw him disappear in to the doorway before reappearing as I got closer. I was still running as fast as I could with gunfire close on my heels but I saw that he planned to remedy the problem of the hostile fire.

I watched as he empty at least three magazines from his AK-47 in the direction of the enemy. Once I was beside the doorway he tossed the rifle to somewhere off in the interior, helped basically drag Mrs. Vester in to the plane, and then grabbed one of my hands as I used the other to grip the edge of the hatch. I pulled myself inside and the door was shut and sealed behind him, muffling the sounds of the engines and gunfire, and leaving only the rapid pinging of shots glancing off the fuselage as a sign that we were still being attacked. Before I had even sat down, the Trust member who had helped me inside was retrieving a medical kit, and attending to Mrs. Vester's thigh shot. From the looks of it, it was a through-and-through shot. After some hospital care and rest, she would be able to walk again. I made may way to the front of the plane where I sat down with a thud and a heavy sigh next to Sergeant Lanier. I took off my officer's cap and rested it on my lap. Looking to the seats in front of me at the sounds of movement, I saw both Franziska and Juliane looking at Sergeant Lanier and I with their chins on the back of their seats. I saw the way Juliane looked at our pockets, and I grinned as I saw Sergeant Laniere retrieve a chocolate bar of his own.

Apparently he had planned ahead for dealing with kids.

"We are safe now, yes?" Dr. Vester asked in choppy English as he came to stop beside me "They can not get us now?"

"We're safe doctor: we'll just make a quick stop in Berlin, hop over to London, and then from there we'll be on our way to the United States." I told him, motioning for him to sit.

As we flew I took the time to reload my Makarov before drifting off to sleep.

.

* * *

.

**Author's Notes:** I'm willing to bet that some of you are wondering what is up with the seemingly random title for this chapter. That is my little tribute to the Central Intelligence Agency, who always named their operations after seemingly _totally_ unrelated subjects for the purpose of security against hostile agents. So I guess this is my minute little tribute the Memorial Wall and the brave men and women in the CIA.

* "Do not worry, it will all be okay."


	6. Chapter 5: Prison Break

**Chapter 5: Prison Break**

_[1__st__ Army Research Division satellite systems loading]_

_[Tracking, Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon]_

_[Status: Alive]_

_[Location: Baghlan, Afghanistan]_

_[Unit: 1st Army Research Division, aka 'the Trust']_

_._

_Well, it seems that we're about to get some time in the sun._

_We had two of our agents operating in Afghanistan on an operation to evaluate various areas where we believe Makarov might be hiding. 1st Lieutenant Lane Huston and Sergeant Sam Huxby had been in the country of Afghanistan for four weeks, giving us regular reports. We don't know how it happened, but they were apparently captured, and we had completely lost track of them until recently when they showed up again._

_A Trustee-operated Predator was over the mountains near the town of Baghlan, Afghanistan when it spotted a convoy of four trucks. Most of the occupants were confirmed to have weapons aboard, except for two. After determining that there were no Coalition soldiers reported as missing in the area, we determined they were ours._

_We watched the two get dragged off the trucks, apparently with their hands bound, and we watched them get hauled to one of the residences of a small-time warlord who is known to have control over that area: Qusay Suhail Assad, the son of Dhakwan Ahmen Assad. We knew that Qusay isn't on our side, even if he says he is, and this just proves that he's working with local Al-Quada insurgents. Your job is simple._

_You'll move in, mark those trucks for destruction, get our boys, and get out._

* * *

"_**Prison Break"**_

_**Day 5 - 01:30:00**_

_**Gunnery Sergeant Donn Kenyon**_

_**The Trust**_

_**Baghlan, Afghanistan**_

The night was completely void of any natural light as I maneuvered our unmarked white SUV towards the town of Baghlan, down the dirt road. Alicia was sitting beside me in the front passenger's seat. She had a face-wrap, a pair of night vision goggles on, she was dressed up enough to hide the fact that she was female in the poor light, and she was cradling an AK-47 in her hands as she observed everything in front of the SUV. Meanwhile, behind us sat two Trust medical experts: Corporal Anthony Chantek and Private Jerome Nessa. Their job was to make sure that the two captured Trustees were stable and okay once we grabbed them.

They were observing our surroundings with their own NODs* as well.

"_Delivery Boy, this is Sight-seer."_ A voice came in through my ear-piece.

We weren't the only four operatives being sent on this mission. While we approached by SUV and in the open, we would make our way for the warlord's house, and extract the agents. Meanwhile a four-man team that had been mounted on ATVs had made their way in by the mountains from the northwest before we came within sight of the town.

They were carrying IR beacons on them to mark the trucks and they would also play a part in our extraction, leaving a raft for us to cross the river that resided on the northwestern side of Baghlan. Once we had the captured Trustees, we would make our way to the river, hop in the left behind raft, cross the river, and head for the primary extraction point. Their squad leader was Sergeant Matthew DeHunt. He was a former member of SEAL Team 3.

"Go Sight-seer." I replied, still scanning everything ahead.

"_We have two of the trucks marked, what is your status?"_ I heard Matt whisper.

I watched the few lights ahead of us, "We're making our way to the checkpoint now, Sight-seer."

"_Affirmative: we'll keep you updated on our progress."_

"I'll dido that, Sight-seer; over-and-out." I replied.

It was only a few moments after that when we started approaching the city's southern check-point that rested in the right side of the road. It consisted of two buildings (one two stories tall, the other three), surrounded by a stone wall, and which had a technical inside when we had reconnaissance flights go over. A light hung over the large wooden gate and cast light out on to the street, revealing the one man standing in the middle of the road who watched our approach.

"I see an MMG** watching us from the roof." Jerome suddenly stated.

Anthony chimed in, "He's watching us like a hawk."

"Yeah, I see him too." Alicia added.

I wasn't wearing my NODs, so I couldn't see it, but I was more than willing to take the word of three highly trained combat operatives that we were being watched by a man with a big gun. I slowly came to a stop as the man in the middle of the road held up a hand, and I stopped so that he was just inside the headlights of the SUV. I was able to get a clear view of him as a result. He had a tanned complexion and black hair, a dark green head-wrap, a thick black beard, he had web gear hanging loosely on his chest, and he held an AK-47 loosely in one hand as he walked over to my side of the car. I rolled the window down when he arrived.

"Good evening, American." He greeted me in heavily accented English.

I only gave him a nod as a reply.

"Mr. Assad told us you would be coming." He added.

"Is he here?" I asked.

He nodded his head a little, "Yes, he's waiting for you arrival at his residence."

"Okay then." Was the only reply I gave him.

He motioned me to go on. I rolled up my window and pulled away.

"He's lying." I stated simply.

"Yeah, no kidding." Alicia said.

"How's that?" Jerome asked curiously.

I explained, "They plan to kill us and he probably doesn't want to get caught in the cross-fire."

"It makes sense." Anthony added.

I had a gut feeling that was the case, and so if it was then they didn't plan for us to leave this town. We would disappear 'mysteriously' if they had their way. We would walk in to the warlord's house, if we were even allowed to the front door, and some of his terrorist friends would probably try to jump us or just simply kill us. After that they would probably try and stash our bodies. They would tell the Americans that we never showed up. Or at least they might have if their plan was going to come to fruition. It wasn't going to, of course.

We weren't Trustees for nothing, after all.

"It looks all clear." Alicia observed as we came to the outermost buildings of the town, proper.

"We've got nothing back here." Jerome added.

The streets looked entirely empty with only a few dull street lamps speckled across the streets. I kept scanning for anything that I could see while the others did the same, carefully moving us down the street. I didn't like the feeling in my gut, which was probably going to be right like many others I had. The best case scenario and the worst case scenarios had one thing very closely in common: either way we would probably end up in the center of a town where a majority of its occupants wanted to kill us.

"Hold on: I think I have something." Alicia whispered as we approached a four-way intersection.

"In the tr..." Jerome was about to tell me when there was a massive explosion.

One of the larger trees came crashing across the intersection directly ahead of us as gunfire suddenly came from the surrounding trees, windows, and alleys. Bullets ricocheted off the SUV as I hit the gas and made a sharp left turn through the intersection. RPGs and gunfire streaked after us, forcing me to detour through a ditch, through a fence, and across a field. Moments later we were across another ditch, through another fence, and crossing a field to a nearby warehouse.

"Sight-Seer this is Delivery Boy: we've been compromised!" I yelled as we came to a stop.

"_Affirmative Delivery Boy, the entire town just lit up."_ Matt was still whispering.

"Give me a Sit-Rep, Sight-Seer!" I ordered as we scrambled from the SUV.

"_We have eyes on the third truck; but do you want us to head for the warlord?"_ He asked.

"Negative, Sight-Seer!" We all started for a nearby house "Mark the trucks and get out!"

"_Rodger Delivery Boy: good luck out there."_ Matt replied.

We reached the back door of a nearby house and I kicked it in. We stormed through to the front door and kicked it out, crossing the street. We could hear gunfire and I assumed that they were probably trying to probe the alleys and various areas of cover for us. Thankfully they weren't actually hitting near us as we cut through another yard, across a street, and then bolted for a gathering of trees. They were in a deep ditch that gave us sufficient cover and concealment; allowing us to all catch our collective breath.

It was then that our location dawned on us.

"Look." Jerome whispered.

We peered over the edge of the ditch to find ourselves looking across the street to the entrance of the warlord's personal compound. There were only three guards at the gate and no mounted weapons of any kind to worry about. They were sitting out in the open and trying to keep an eye out for us in the total darkness. They didn't even know what was coming as I pulled a frag grenade from my chest. Pulling the pin, I released the spoon, I counted to three, and then I tossed it over-hand towards the three guards. It landed right near one man's feet and they all had about two seconds to realize what it was and try to respond.

That obviously wasn't enough time.

One man's legs were gone when the grenade went off, the man closest to him had his front filled with shrapnel, and the third fell to the ground screaming in agony with wounds across one side. We rose from the ditch and Alicia shot him as we ran past. When we approached the heavy-looking wooden double-doors, we were surprised by a lack of response from security. Alicia and I each came to one of the two doors and kicked them in.

"Anthony, Alicia: check upstairs!" I ordered "Jerome, you're with me!" I ordered.

Alicia and Anthony wasted no time in heading for the stairs up while Jerome and I moved through the first floor to search for the entrance to the basement. We moved through like lightning, kicking in doors, clearing rooms, and moving on as quickly as we could. A kitchen, two walk-in closets, a bathroom, and a large guest room all passed like lightning. Then we got to the final door left. Jerome kicked it open and I took point. As I rushed through on to the stone steps leading to the basement, I came face-to-face with a young man in a full face-wrap.

We were too close to raise our guns.

I went on instinct and speared him down the stairs.

I speared him down the stairs, letting my gun hang by its strap. We tumbled down the stairs, grunting and yelling all the way down, and both of us trying to land any blow we could as we went. When we hit the bottom, we smacked in to the wall with a unanimous "oof" sound. At that moment I found myself under him and he seemed just as surprised about this as I was. I recovered quicker and drew my knife from my shoulder-strapped sheath. I stabbed him twice and pushed him off of me to the floor. I looked up to see Jerome covering me.

He pulled me up from the ground and I grabbed my gun. Once again, we moved like lightning to clear the area. Once again we moved from to room. As we moved two more bathrooms, a pair of surprisingly empty barracks, _another_ walk-in closet, and two lounges of sorts went past liked a blur. Then we hit the final door once again. As we busted in I came in to see the back of another man in a full face-wrap. He began to turn around and raise a pistol at me. He didn't raise it fast enough and I shot him in the chest. He fell like a bag of bricks, his pistol skittering across the stone floor, and hitting the room.

In the center of the room was a chaired with a man in British-style desert camouflage tied to it. He was a chocolate-skinned man with a shaved head and sunken features. As he looked up I could see that his face was cut and bruised up but even with that he managed to give me some sort of a smile as I approached. I remembered the pictures we were shown and realized that I was looking at 1st Lieutenant Lane Huston.

"It took you guys long enough." He coughed.

"Sorry: we took a wrong turn at Kabul." I chuckled.

He chuckled and I didn't even notice Jerome moving to the corner with obvious concern on his face. I moved behind the chair and retrieved my knife to cut the man's binds. I watched as he slowly stood up, steadying himself with a hand behind him on the chair. Once he was stable I took off my Kalashnikov and handed it to him. I gave him some of my spare magazines and I watched as he tucked them in to his belt. I stuck with my .45 handgun. It was then that he looked at me with concern across his beaten features.

"How's Sam?" He asked.

"He's pretty beat up, but he's okay." Jerome replied.

I looked back to see Sam. There was a bed with an extremely dirty and uncomfortable-looking mattress on it. Sergeant Sam Huxby was lying on the bed. The upper part of his uniform was gone and I could see some of the damage. He was covered in cuts, bruises, and a few gashes that Jerome was just finishing wrapping up. By the looks of it, he was unconscious, and pretty beat up. If I didn't know better, he looked nearly dead in his unconsciousness.

"Are you sure, Jerome?" I asked.

"Yeah." Jerome replied with a grunt as he hoisted the man up "It'll hold till we get out of here."

"Good: then let's move." I ordered.

We started moving through the basement to the steps once again.

"Alicia: we have them!" I barked in to me ear-piece "Can you get us a ride out of here?"

"_Yes sir, we'll head for the garage."_ She replied.

"Good, then we'll meet you there!" I replied as we ascended the stairs.

There was a large one-story garage in the north of the warlord's compound where we knew a small collection of vehicles was kept. With our own SUV compromised it was our only hope of getting out to the river. From there we would just ditch it and get out of there. As we moved through the first floor I saw the shoulder-mounted inferred strobes that identified Alicia and Anthony as they moved to the northern side door. That lead out from the kitchen and straight towards the side-door of the aforementioned garage.

We came running after them and I pulled a smoke grenade from my vest as I heard the gunfire outside. I popped the pin and as we reached the door I tossed it towards the main entrance to the warlord's residence. I heard people cursing and shouting in Arabic as the smoke plumed out and began obscuring their view. As we reached the garage's side door, Alicia kicked it in. We all came rushing inside with Antony and Lieutenant Huston covering the door while Alicia, Jerome, and I headed for the first vehicle we saw: a clean white van.

When we came up to it, we found that the doors were unlocked. Jerome loaded himself and Sergeant Huxby in the back, Alicia took the front passenger seat, and Anthony and Lieutenant Huston still covered the door while I hot-wired the vehicle. Once I had that done and it came to life, they piled in as quickly as possible while I situated myself. We turned on the headlights, I shifted gears, and we plowed through the wooden gate-style door of the garage. Splinters flew from it as I cranked the steering wheel and aimed for the gate. I could see some of the fighters still in the open diving out of the way as I drove towards the exit.

Then we were in the streets and I was moving towards the river at the west as fast as I could. Now that we had the agents, I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. The sooner we got out of here then the sooner we and the agents would be safe. So I began moving through the town as fast as I possibly could.

"Sight-seer, what's your status?" I had to yell over the gunfire hitting the outside of the van.

"_We marked the fourth truck and we are crossing the river, now."_ Matthew replied.

"Understood Sight-seer; we're heading for the river now!" I still had to yell over the gunfire.

As we reached the edge of one of the outer roads, I turned off the headlights, and flipped down my NODs. We would rely on our night vision so that they wouldn't be able to find us by simply looking for our lights. Unfortunately, the route we were taking was anything but pleasant. We hit a field and started bumping across it as we began moving past a large farm where two of the marked trucks now sat. The people around it shot out in our general direction an attempt to stop us but we shot right past them and on to a dirt road. From there we were moving along a brick wall until I turned right on to a somewhat wide stone bridge.

"Are we being followed?" Alicia asked as we promptly went off the road in to another field.

"I don't think so!" Jerome replied with a grunt.

I kept moving through the field until I saw the inferred marker that identified the boat's location. Pulling up to it, we all began piling out as fast as we possibly could. Jerome got on to the raft first, carrying Sergeant Huxby with him. Lieutenant Huston and Anthony were next. Once they were all in Alicia and I hopped in. Alicia started the motor and we began making our way downriver just a short ways. Meanwhile I looked to the coast, where Matthew and his team were waiting for us in the darkness.

Once we pulled ashore, they moved to meet us.

We wanted to get Lieutenant Huston and Sergeant Huxby out as fast as we possibly could.

"Anthony, Jerome: go with them!" I ordered.

"Why?" Anthony sounded perplexed.

"In case something happens to them before you get to the LZ." I explained "We'll walk."

There was no argument from them as the two recently captured Trustees and the two medical experts of my team loaded on to the back of Sight-seer's ATVs. Once everybody was secure they took off in to the valley while Alicia and I began moving slowly after them. We knew that they would be able to get to the extraction before us and so they would all get out first. Then Alicia and I would signal for a second helicopter and get out ourselves. Until then we were still in enemy territory and so we moved cautiously down the dirt road in the base of the valley that lead to our planned extraction zone.

**Nearly thirty minutes later...**

The extraction zone was rather open for my tastes. Knee-high grass filled a field between two roads in the interlinking valleys. That's all there was. There were no ditches, trees, or any other solid thing to provide Alicia and I with cover from enemy fire. Instead we had simply called in for our extraction and had each gone prone some distance away from each other. I watched the road that we had come up along while Alicia watched the other. We had arrived at the area around twenty minutes ago and had been waiting the last ten minutes for our extraction.

Everything was entirely silent, save for some wind blowing across the mountains.

That's when we heard it off in the distance: the distinct sound of an approaching Chinook.

"_Delivery Boy this is Zulu 2: we are approaching the EZ now."_ The pilot came over my radio.

"Rodger that Zulu 2; you are cleared for landing." I whispered.

I kept watching the road as I heard the Chinook get closer and closer to our location. As I felt it's rotor-wash come across my back, I took the time to glance over my shoulder. I saw the helicopter as it descended slowly in to the field. Its nose was pointed up and its landing gear was down as it lowered in to the field. Grass was pushed down flat in a large circle all around the helicopter as it touched down. The ramp was already down and a man in a flight suit was inside the bay of the helicopter waiting for us.

Alicia and I rose up from the grass to head for it. She was the first there and I watched her quickly bound up the ramp, inside. I came in after her, walking backwards up the ramp to cover us. Once I was aboard I watched the crew chief as he spoke in to his helmet microphone. After that he raised the ramp and I felt the helicopter pick up off the ground. With a sigh of relief I called in the last phase of the mission.

"Control this Delivery Boy." I sighed, coming off my adrenaline rush.

"_Go, Delivery Boy."_ The young woman on the other end sounded _way_ too energetic.

"We are bugging out now: continue with the next phase of the mission." I leaned back.

"_Understood Delivery Boy; good job out there."_ I could almost _hear_ her smile.

* * *

_**NODs =**_ "Night Observation Devices". This means night-vision or thermal goggles. It's a simple acronym used to refer to them.

**Author's Notes:** Wow...it's been a _looooooooooooooooooooong_ time since I updated. I guess the computer crashing, Word giving you trouble, needing to deal with relationship drama, and life in general can do that to you sometimes. Oh well...it's good to be back in the swing of things.

By the way: BLACK OPS! WOOOOOOH!


End file.
